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Color scheme generator

Now more than ever, it's important for you to look great online. Whether that's your website, social media, or the content that you produce, you want to make sure that it stands out and is enticing for your visitors.

So in today's video, I'm gonna share with you seven free websites to help you make your content look amazing.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And let's get started by talking about colors. The first website I want to introduce you to is actually called Coolors, spelled C-O-O-L-O-R-S.

And the idea behind the Coolors website is to help you find a new color palette which is going to work for you.

And the great thing is it's absolutely free. All you need to do is select Start the generator, and you're gonna be presented with a screen with five different colors.

Now, by selecting the space bar on my keyboard, all of the colors in front of me are going to randomly cycle through different pallets.

Now, no, I don't have to zero in on one particular pallet. Once you find a color that you like, let's say, I like this particular ruby shade here, I can select this lock icon, and now this color is going to stay.

So I can continue to press that space bar and see if there's any other colors that I think are going to go well with it.

Maybe I like this Space Cadet here.

So what I'm gonna do here, is I'm gonna select that lock icon.

If I want to, I can actually drag these colors over to the left-hand side if I want to, and then continue to cycle through some other colors here on the right.

Now, of course, I don't need to find five different colors.

I don't need a color palette which is that large, but at any time here, all I need to do is select the Copy HEX icon, and now I can paste that hex code anywhere I want.

Color palette designer

Next up, we're gonna stick with colors for a moment, and go to the paletton.com website.

Now we can punch in any hex code or RGB code that we like. We can select from the variety of different colors here on this color wheel, but where Paletton's strength really lies is in finding complimentary colors.

So for example here, maybe I like this purple. Maybe this is my primary color or shade for my website, but I want a slightly darker or a slightly lighter shade.

And here it's going to show me what those shades are. If I click on them, I can get further details and copy that hex code here as well.

But I also frequently look at the different relationships here, up in the left-hand corner.

So if I want to see what else is related to, maybe I want to see the triad of colors here, or maybe this a tetrad of colors here, I can see that, yeah, these colors do go well with this purple.

Maybe I want to use these colors as an accent.

So it's quick, it's easy, it's free. I'm in and out and finding some new color ideas for all of my content.

Vector icons & stickers

But enough about color, let's jump into adding some graphics, and in particular, adding some icons, which are going to stand out, whether you're producing a presentation, whether you want to add some flair to your website, or wherever you want to throw a little bit of visual difference.

Here, I am at the Flaticon website, and all I need to do is come into this search bar and type in something, let's say something like laptop.

I'm gonna type in laptop, and what I'm delivered with is a variety of different icons, which I can use for free.

Here, you can see we've got a combination of both black and white icons, but we also have some more three-dimensional and full-color icons here to choose from as well.

What I like is how easy it is to search for something here within the Flaticon space.

So for example, maybe I want to look at some phone data or something along the likes here.

Now, I may be presented with some pop-up ads along the way, but keep in mind, all of these images here, I can use for free.

The one thing that you do want to note is that you must give credit to the Flaticon website or to the author of each of these images, but these can really help make your presentations, or your content, or your website stand out.

Remove background image

But of course, for a lot of our content, we're dealing with real images, whether they are our own or other royalty-free images that we might find online.

And in many cases, we may want to remove the background and just focus in on the individual, or maybe whatever's in the foreground.

For that, I like to go to remove.bg, the BG standing for background.

And all we need to do is to start by uploading an image.

So I've got an image here. Let's pick this one right here.

I'm gonna say Open.

And what I'm going to do, it's going to take a moment to upload that image, and then actually remove it in a matter of seconds.

I didn't have to select the area, I didn't have to do anything else. Right now, I've got the image removed.

Now at this stage, I can go ahead and download this image at 500 by 500 pixels.

However, if I do want a full high-definition image, I will need to sign up for the removebg service.

However, in my case, when I'm dealing with things such as social media, usually my graphics don't need to be very large anyhow, so just this size is going to do me well, and it may serve you well, too.

Write better headlines

Now so far in our list today, we've talked about colors, and images, and graphics, but of course, depending on the content that you're producing, you want to make sure that you have a catchy title or headline.

And that's precisely where Headline Studio comes into place.

Headline Studio allows you to test out a variety of different headlines, and to see how well they may score against your competitors and also those who are interested in your content.

So for example here, here are some that I've been testing out recently: "3 ways to track your time for better results."

I'm gonna hit analyze.

And what's it going to tell me?

It's gonna do an analysis of both the word count, the types of words that I'm using, are there power words, common words, and give me a score.

So in this case, it's actually given me a pretty good score, saying that this might be attractive to either my viewers or other people who may be browsing my content.

Let's try another one really quickly here.

Look at this. (computer keys clacking)

Now this may seem enticing here; it's nice and short and sweet, however, it might just be a little too short.

And what Headline Studio is saying is that, well, at a score of 32, I should maybe try something else.

"Look at this amazing way to tie your shoes."

How about that?

Is that gonna change anything with my score here?

Well, that certainly improved it a lot at 64, but I can continue to play around and massage these titles until I get a score which is hopefully in the green, something that's a little more enticing and that's gonna give me the confidence to publish that headline or title in the future.

Now sticking with titles for a moment,

Title capitalization tool

another website that I use on a regular basis is Capitalize My Title.

How often have you been preparing a title or a headline, and then looking at it and asking yourself, "Should I capitalize this word or that word?

"Should that be lowercase, or should that be uppercase?"

Well, Capitalize My Title will allow you to analyze your titles through a variety of different standards.

So I'm gonna paste in that title that we just looked at on the previous website, "Look at This Amazing Way to Tie Your Shoes."

And here, you can see it has analyzed it and changed it based on the APA style.

So the at is lowercase, the to is lowercase, and everything else is uppercase.

Now of course, you don't have to paste in your title, you can start writing in things right away.

"This is the Best Way to Read Books at Night," for example.

So I typed that title in without using any type of shift key or any type of capitalization, but it has changed it dynamically along the way.

Create graphic design

So now that you have your colors, and your images, and your title all in place, let's bring it all together with maybe one of the best free websites of all, and that is Canva.

Canva allows you to produce eye-popping and professional-looking content, no matter where you are placing that content.

So for example here, I've clicked on the Social Media tab here.

Instagram posts, Facebook posts, a variety of different formats you can browse from here, and create your own professional-looking posts.

Maybe it's a presentation, maybe if we go over here to Marketing and we need to create a poster or a business card, or a Facebook ad, you can do so here as well.

The great thing about Canva is that it allows you to start with a number of different templates, so you don't always have to start off from scratch.

So for example, here is something that I was working on a little bit earlier today, using a template that Canva presented with me.

So not only is this gonna be a much more eye-catching Instagram post here, but I can come in here and edit anything I want.

Maybe I don't want this to say "kids" at the bottom, I can just delete it here.

Maybe I want to swap out this image with something we found on Flaticon, I can do so.

I can change the colors of anything that I want on this screen.

Maybe I wanna change the color based on something that we found on the Coolors website, for example.

So Canva is not only free, but allows you to create eye-popping content, which is sure to please your viewers.

Now if you have other websites that you find useful when it comes to creating content for your website, your business, or anything online, I'd love to hear from you.

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why it's important for your email to stand out

You probably send an awful lot of email, and as a result, that means that your messages are just one of hundreds that other people are seeing.

So how can you stand out and increase the chances of people connecting and replying to your emails?

Well in this video, I'm going to share with you five tools to help you stand out as you're creating your messages right here within Gmail.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And let's start off simple and we're going to work our way up to something a little more complex, including how to create a professional-looking signature just like the one you see here.

Professional Grammar checker

Now, the first one on my list is something you've probably heard before, and that is Grammarly.

Grammarly is free, or at least there's a free forever version, but Grammarly has saved me so many times.

It's the reason why I mention it on a regular basis.

So here I am crafting an email.

I want to send a relatively short email to this individual, but you can see that Grammarly is helping me out before I hit the send button.

Why? Well, it actually hasn't caught any spelling mistakes.

Gmail has some basic spell-checking built right in, but what it wants to do is make me sure that I sound great when it comes to writing my emails.

So in this case, you can see I've used the wrong form- Yeah, that's not your, it should be you're, or you are.

And all I have to do is hover over these red underlined words and I can make the change.

I can say, yeah, let's use the correct version here.

This second one is a very, very silly mistake.

But how often are you in a rush?

How often do you forget to double-check or reread your messages?

So, yeah, it's not meat, it's M-E-E-T.

Can we meet next Monday?

And then this last one that Grammarly is suggesting to me, there's no spelling mistake.

In fact, thanks for all you do and keeping us in the loop.

It actually looks pretty good to me, but if I hover over it, you know what, I'm actually not using the proper format here.

It should be for keeping.

Thanks for all you do and for keeping us in the loop.

So now, I'm going to sound that much more professional and that much more accurate when it comes to my grammar.

The other nice thing that I like is if you hover over the Grammarly icon in the bottom right-hand corner of any of your emails when you have the Grammarly extension installed is you can also see how your text may sound to your readers.

So for example, if I click on this icon here, Grammarly is telling me that this particular message is relatively optimistic and friendly.

Now, I can choose to grade this either up or down to see if I think they are accurate.

But I know this can be the handy, especially if you're a little heated.

Maybe if you're a little angry or upset, maybe you want to take a quick glance down below and see, oh, is that really how I come across?

Maybe I can change this message.

Identify weak messages

The next tool on our list is an extension called Just Not Sorry.

And the whole idea behind Just Not Sorry is to look for certain words that often make us sound weak or less confident in our messaging.

So with the Just Not Sorry extension installed, here you can see it's picking up on a few key words or key phrases.

So for example, I just wanted to check in.

If I hover over just, it's actually going to tell me that this often demeans what I have to say.

In fact, just often shrinks our power.

So I may want to remove just, and just say, hey, I wanted to check in and see if you had a chance to review my proposal.

I'm sorry.

Now, sorry is a powerful word.

And I think there are times when we do want to use that term, but if you're overusing it, it may also undermine your messaging as well.

And then lastly here, in this last sentence example, but if we can set up a meeting next week, I think that we can come to an agreement.

I think is another one of those terms that often displays an overall lack of self-confidence.

And I like these little descriptions that they give us when we hover our mouse over these words.

So instead of I think, maybe I can say I know that we can come to an agreement.

That's a much more confident stance.

It's not overly aggressive, but it's a positive stance as well as I'm replying to this message.

So if you'd like some hints as to when you are using some of these weaker terms, you can install the Just Not Sorry extension.

Awesome email signatures

Now, one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd and look professional is by having an awesome email signature.

And for that, we're going to take a look at a website called MySignature.io.

Now, MySignature allows you to quickly and easily create a custom email signature that is either as complex or as simple as you like.

So for example here, here, I was creating an email signature here on the right-hand side of the screen, but I can swap out or remove or customize any of these call to action settings here as I like.

But I can either go from what I've been working on here, or let me show you how to start from scratch.

So here from the MySignature dashboard, all I need to do is select new signature.

And I'm presented with a variety of custom-made templates.

Now, there's several different categories in which you can choose from.

We can look at professional, modern, elegant, creative.

I'm going to stick with this friendly one.

And I'd like to get started with this one right here.

So I'm going to click on it.

And yeah, it's a beautiful email signature.

It just doesn't have my information.

But no problem, it's quick and easy.

Just by filling out the fields here on the left-hand side, I can customize all of my branding, all of my colors.

I can add a logo so I can keep that branding consistent whether they're coming from my website, to my email, to my social media, I can bring it all together right here from within my signature.

So for example, let's just put in my name here.

So it's myself.

And the very next thing I want to do is actually swap out this image.

So I can either click on the tabs over here on the left, or I can click on the different elements here within the signature preview on the right.

So maybe I want to swap out that picture.

I'm going to remove that.

And let's go back and choose a file that is yeah, a little bit more me, shall we say that?

Now, the great thing is, is that there's a lot of customizable features here.

So if I want, for example, maybe some rounded corners on the side.

Maybe I want a rounded picture here.

All I need to do is now drag this so my face is within that circle.

I'm going to hit apply.

And immediately it's added to the signature here on the right-hand side.

Maybe I want to customize my social buttons here.

Maybe I want to add my Facebook page.

Well, no problem.

All I would need to do is put in my Facebook ID over here and then I can drag and rearrange the order of those social icons.

And if you have a call to action, if you want a book me button or anything of the like, you can do so and include it right here within your signature.

Now, when you're all finished designing your signature, all you need to do is select save signature in the lower right-hand column.

Now, this will give us the ability to copy it to our clipboards.

I'm going to copy it right here.

And now, if we go back into our Gmail account, all we need to do is hit the gear icon and select see all settings.

And on the very first tab, if we scroll almost all the way down to the bottom, we can add a new signature.

So I'm going to select create new in this case.

I'm going to call this one a my signature, for example.

I'm going to say create.

And right here, all I have to do is paste what we copied to our clipboard right here on the right-hand side.

Now, at the very bottom, don't forget to hit save changes.

And now, let's go ahead and compose a new message.

I'm going to swap this default signature out for the one that we just created here.

This my signature.

You now have a professional-looking signature, which is also useful to your readers.

Embed meeting times

Now, the next tool in our list is designed to remove friction when it comes to creating meetings.

Many of us are using scheduling tools, such as Calendly.

And you may be used to just copying and pasting your meeting link right here within the email.

But why not stand out from the crowd and make it that much easier for your recipients to select a time?

If you have the Calendly browser extension installed, all you need to do is select it from your browser window.

And here, you can see some of the meetings that I already have set up here.

Now, I could just copy the link for this 30-minute meeting and paste it in my message.

When they select that link, they would be brought to a new browser tab and see my entire calendar.

But what if I choose this option, add times to email.

This is a fantastic solution, especially if you want to propose just a few specific days.

So I'm going to say add times to email, and I'm brought up with a miniature calendar here.

I'm going to select the Thursday and Friday of next week.

And I'm going to say finish and share.

It tells me that the times are copied to my clipboard.

I can now close this.

And I'm going to come back to my message and just paste it in here.

And look at this, I've got the options embedded directly into the calendar.

So when I send this message, the person on the other end can come right in here, right from the email itself and select a time that works for them.

Now, the last tool on our list today

Email video messages

is only for those who really want to wow the socks off the people they're sending emails to.

You know, we're so used to a text-based world, whether that's text messaging, instant messaging, or of course email, but if you really want to impress the people that you're messaging with, why not send a video email?

In this case, we're going to be using Loom, and in particular, the Loom extension.

Now, Loom is a great tool for recording screenshots and screencasting, especially if you're trying to help solve a problem or share something online.

But in this case, we're just going to use the video format and embed it into our Gmail message.

So here with the Loom extension installed, I've clicked on it to open up those settings.

I'm actually going to click this up here so it's a little bit closer to my camera, so it looks like I'm looking at you.

I can adjust my settings here in terms of the microphone and which camera that I'm using, but all I need to do is start recording.

And it's going to give me a quick countdown.

And now I'm recording.

Hi Sariah, I just wanted to reach back out to you and see if this might answer your question.

And of course, this is where I could answer the question directly.

At this point, all I need to do is hit this little check mark down below, which is going to finish the recording.

It's going to open up Loom in a new tab where I can make changes and adjustments, including trimming this particular video, so I can always preview it before I send it out.

But here's a, another quick tip.

Loom allows us to add a call to action button.

So for example, if I click this option here on the right-hand side, I could say something like book a time with me or something like that.

And maybe I could add the link directly to my Calendly appointment or to some other booking tool.

I'm just going to put in some text here just for fun just so I can save this call to action.

If I want to change the color and be on brand, yeah, I can do that as well.

Let's give this a, let's give this a color like, oh, I, don't know, something that's a little more Simpletivity blue.

And this doesn't look like a valid URL so let's just type in my website here for example, Simpletivity.com.

Now, I can save that call to action and what's going to happen is that it's going to appear here in the right-hand side of the screen.

So now when they're watching this video, they can also come up here and click this call to action.

Now, when we're happy with the finished product, all we need to do is come up here and select the share button.

Now, we want to choose the third option, which is embed, and I'm going to select copy GIF thumbnail.

This is going to copy it to my clipboard and I'm going to come back to my email message and I'm going to paste it in directly into my message.

The great thing here is that now they're going to see a quick preview of that video.

It's that much more engaging.

It's that much more inviting.

And because it's my face on screen, they know I'm not just spamming them with an advertisement or something else.

They know that it's me.

Now, the text up here above can be removed, it can be altered, so if I don't want to see that, I can just remove that here.

So if you want to truly engage with your email audience, try the Loom extension for Gmail.

If you have questions about any of the tools that I mentioned today, or if you have recommendations of your own, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple

Why daily schedules can be helpful

Many of you have asked me, 'Scott, what does your typical workday look like?'

Well, in this video, I'm gonna walk you through hour by hour what an average workday looks for me.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And I'm gonna be using Google Calendar here.

I'm gonna throw on emojis and titles so you can see exactly how I sort of structure and break out my day.

I have always found it very helpful to take a glance at other people's schedules, whether they're famous people such as Benjamin Franklin, or just my next door neighbor, just to get some ideas and inspiration as I've experimented on my own schedule.

So hopefully, you find this valuable and maybe there's some ideas in here as well.

Morning Routine

Now I used to start my day off bright and early at 5:00 a.m.

This was particularly useful when I had young children and I wanted to get a number of things done before they awoke, and before the rest of my family awoke in the morning.

However, over the last few years, I've adjusted that a little bit, and I start my day off sometime between 6:00 a.m and 6:30.

So let's find something like a sunshine icon here, and I'm going to say, 'wake up.'

Now, you're probably asking yourself, what do you mean you're getting up sometime between 6 and 6:30?

Don't you set an alarm?

Yes, I do.

But it's a little different than what I did in the past.

About a year ago, I purchased what's called a wake up light, meaning that it tries to mimic the effects of a sunrise.

So this little light alarm starts off very dim, but over the course of the half hour it gets brighter and brighter and brighter.

So depending on how deep I am in my sleep, it will awake me sometime within that half hour range.

I really, really like this wake up light and prefer to wake up this way rather than adjusting an alarm or being tempted to hit the snooze button multiple times.

So I'm certainly up by 6:30, sometimes it's just a little bit earlier than that.

The next thing on my list, the way I like to start my day is to doing just a little bit of reading, and you know what?

I forgot to include the emojis.

So let's go add, let's go add something like a book emoji, something like that, a stack of books to start off my day.

Now, this is usually relatively short, sometimes as short as only 15 minutes.

I like to read something that is non-fiction and something that is uplifting in the morning.

And I make sure that it is not social media.

It is not a news site.

I would much rather read a physical or a tangible book, probably something that I was reading earlier the night before for example, or earlier in the week.

But I just find it a nice refreshing and positive way to start my day.

After I've done a little bit of reading, it's time for me to do some exercise.

And my favorite exercise is running.

So, it doesn't happen every single day, but if I'm not running, I'll do some other type of aerobic or body weight workout to start my day.

Now, when all is said and done, it probably takes me roughly 45 minutes to complete this step or to work out this entire time.

I'm gonna hit 45 minutes there and then drag it down just below where the reading stops there.

So 6:45 is roughly when I'm starting my exercise routine.

I used to be an outside runner, last year we purchased our very first treadmill and I've really enjoyed it, not only the convenience of being able to run in just a few minutes time, but I find it keeps me a little more honest as well as I'm going through the different inclines and going through the different programs on the machine.

Now, after running, if that's going to take me to about 7:30, well, next up for me is breakfast.

And let's see, let's type in something like, maybe an egg.

I'm not usually eating an egg.

In fact, I usually start my days with a smoothie, but I don't believe that there is a smoothie emoji that we can use.

So breakfast, in my case, probably when all is said and done is roughly 15 or 45 minutes in length.

And what I mean by that, it doesn't take me that long to eat breakfast, but this is also a time where I can spend it with my kids.

I can spend it with my kids before they're off to school.

I can spend some time speaking with my wife, sharing a few laughs, talking about what we're going to do later in the evening.

So, roughly 30 minutes to maybe 45 minutes of a family time slash breakfast.

Next up, because I'm still sweaty at this point, it's time to jump into the shower.

So I think there's a shower emoji here.

So, let's just say, 'shower and get dressed,' I guess is exactly what we're doing at that particular time.

And, no, it doesn't take me very long at all.

This should only take me roughly 15 minutes in total.

Let's see if I can drag that one down.

Start of the workday

There we go.

Perfect.

So, roughly 15 minutes to get myself ready, and now it's time to jump into work.

Now I'm fortunate that I get to work from a home office.

So there is no commute, there is no transit, there is no driving.

And the way that I start my workday off is jumping into email.

Now you might be surprised by this because I used to tell people to avoid email at all costs first thing in the morning, I used to advise people and coach people that they should be doing something much more productive than dealing with email.

But what I discovered, not only for myself, but for other people as well, is that if you avoid email too long in the morning, a lot of us start to worry about, well, what is there, what's going on in my inbox, is someone waiting for an urgent reply?

And we often struggle to focus on those first things as a part of the day.

So even though for a number of years, I would avoid email for at least the first hour of my day, now I actually start my day with 30 minutes of email.

But I am very strict with myself, meaning I only do a maximum of 30 minutes of email.

I wanna try and do as much as I can, but I know I've got a lot more important things to get to as a part of my workday.

So by roughly 9:00 a.m. I'm done with email, even if I haven't read everything that's come in overnight, or from the last time I checked my email, it's time to start my day.

So at 9:00 AM, I'm gonna categorize this as a deep work and I'm gonna grab something, this bulls-eye emoji here, and I'm gonna call this deep work a, a term that, Cal Newport, author Cal Newport has certainly popularized in the last number of years.

Now, this is a much bigger stretch of time.

In fact, I'm gonna put about two and a half hours here, and I'm just gonna define sort of what I mean by deep work.

Obviously, there's a variety of activities that I could be doing during this morning block, but it's often things that are a lot more focus intensive.

It's things that require a lot more energy on my part, maybe a lot more research.

This is often when I record many of my videos, such as this one here.

This is often when I'm delivering classes, virtual webinars, it's when I'm running the RESET Productivity Masterclass.

So, almost all of those types of activities are happening first thing in the morning, I realize that it's a big block of time, right?

It's two and a half hours, and it certainly doesn't look the same each and every day.

But if there's something that I think is at risk of being deferred into another day, so for example, if I don't get to it until later in the afternoon, and I know that there's a high chance that I'm gonna push it to another day or another time, I'll try and do it first thing in the morning, that's where I wanna do my toughest work or my most focus intense work at that time of day.

Then at around 11:30, I'm going to return to email.

So let's grab that email icon again and type in, I think I need to get rid of the emoji, the emoji window here and type in email.

And we're only doing that for another half hour, sometimes not even a half hour.

In fact, often I'll work right up until about 11:45 or 11:50.

This is just a super quick check-in with email.

In fact, I'm often not even replying too many of the messages, I just wanna scan through my email, see if there's anything urgent, if there's anything that's going to change what I'm gonna be focusing on for the rest of the afternoon.

I'm a firm believer that we should be spending as little amount of time, as less time as possible within our email inbox, and that only a small handful of us actually need to be dealing with email on a regular basis.

So, again, after my morning half hour, this is sort of a quick check-in, again, a half hour at most, but I'd say on average, it's only taking me a roughly 15 minutes.

Afternoon schedule

At 12, it's time to break for some lunch.

So let's put in something that, especially over the winter, I eat an awful lot of, I'm a big fan of soup, not only eating soup, but making soup as well.

So this is gonna be lunch slash break because I certainly don't spend an entire 45 minutes eating and, or making my lunch, but I wanna be able to step away, get out of my office, eat something, hopefully, nutritious, and hopefully delicious as well as I step away from my work.

But there's a few other things that I'll include in this block of time.

Often I may go and check the mail or do some other household chores such as empty the dishwasher or throw another load into the washing machine.

Just try to tidy up a little bit, help the rest of the family.

And again, just sort of physically get away from my office and get away from my work.

Now this last little 15 minute increment, roughly, roughly between 12:45 and 1:00 p.m. is something that I rarely, rarely miss, and that is a quick power nap.

So let's throw in some Z's here, and I'm gonna call this one nap.

Now I used to nap for close to a half hour.

I've reduced that to only about 15 minutes.

And what I mean by that is that in fact, most days I don't even get to sleep.

That's not enough time for most cases for myself to even get into a sleep state, but I simply just lie down, dark room as quiet as I can make it and just, just relax, right?

Just sort of relax and be still for 15 minutes.

Now, depending on where you are in the world, there are different cultural norms when it comes to napping.

And I know that especially here in North America, we still sort of frown upon taking a nap, even if it's a short nap in the middle of the day.

I find this has been one of the biggest boosts to my personal productivity.

This is something that I've been doing for nearly 15 years is including a short power nap.

It gives me the energy, it rejuvenates me for the rest of the afternoon and really for the rest of the day, even if you don't get to sleep, just taking that short break can have a massive impact on the rest of your day.

Next, we've got another sort of section of work in here, and this would really what I would call sort of slash creative or admin work.

So, maybe I'm gonna do something like files.

We've got like a sort of a file folder here.

I almost feel that I also want to put in something like a, a paintbrush or something along those lines.

I'm gonna say this is admin and creative work.

It's gonna change day by day, but this is sort of roughly what I'm doing in the afternoon.

Now I'm gonna be doing this for roughly an hour and a half.

So I'm gonna put that 1 to 2:30 p.m.

So these are things that I need to get done.

It's not exactly crucial like the deep work I'm doing in the morning, but these may be things related to budgeting for my business.

It may be taking a look at invoices and doing some more administrative tasks.

The creative side of things is when I'm having to maybe edit a video or maybe revising a PowerPoint slide deck, or maybe posting some social media content to be scheduled in the future.

I find that I really have a lot of energy, much more energy for that type of work later in the afternoon.

Now that I've done all that focus work in the morning.

So whether it's more admin tasks or creative tasks, I'm gonna save that for later in the afternoon.

Lastly, at roughly 2:30, we are going to return to email for the third and only time that I will touch email for that day.

So this is only gonna be, again, a maximum of half hour finishing up at around 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon.

This is where, again, I will be replying, I'll be trying to get through as much as I possibly can, but I space out the times that I deal with email so I can focus as much time as I can with my work.

End of work and evening activities

Now I try my best to end my workday at around 3:00 p.m.

Why?

Because by that time, most of my boys are home from school and I wanna spend it with them.

I wanna hear about their day, maybe help them with their homework and also start to get ready for the evening, whether that's some food prep for dinner or whatever else is going on in the evening.

So it's a lot harder for me to fill in the blanks here on a typical average evening.

I will tell you that I avoid work at all costs, and I stop my workday as much as I can at roughly three in the afternoon.

Why?

Because I wanna be completely refreshed when I returned to work the following morning, and not just get into this cycle of checking my work emails and replying to things and working on other things during the evening.

I have an awful lot of activities and often a lot of driving to do when it comes to my boys' activities.

The only other two things I will add, two things that I rarely miss out on my daily schedule is a return to reading later in the evening.

So let's grab this book here, and we're gonna call this one reading.

I try to read for about 45 minutes to an hour before I finish my night.

And for me, it's my goal to get my head on a pillow, no, not a pill, a pillow, let's put sleep here by 10:30 at night.

So that is bedtime for me to try and get into bed at 10:30.

So I can get as close to eight hours of sleep before the start of the next day.

So now that you know what an average workday looks like for me, I would love to hear from you, what was the biggest surprise as you take a look at my typical schedule?

In addition, I would love to hear from you and what does your workday look like?

I'm sure others would be interested to know, so they might want to adjust their own personal schedules.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Jotform vs Google Forms

When it comes to creating online forms and choosing the best form builder for you, you have a lot of choices.

However, two of the most popular form builders are Google Forms and JotForm.

So in today's video, I'm gonna help you decide which of these form builders are best for you.

I'm gonna give you three good reasons as to why you should either choose Google Forms or JotForm.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

So let's get started with Google Forms.

Why you should choose Google Forms

Now Google Forms, of course, is integrated directly within your Drive account.

Whether you use a Google Workspace account for your business, or if it's just for your personal use, if you're already using Docs and Sheets and Slides, it's gonna be very easy for you to find Forms here within Google Drive.

Now, my first reason for why you should choose Google Forms is if your form needs are relatively basic.

And what I mean by that is if you just need a simple contact form for your webpage, if you just need to send out a very simple survey or a very simple questionnaire like what we see here, Google Forms might be ideal for your needs.

It's quick and easy for you to get started and to add those questions and rearrange those questions as well.

If I wanna move things around here, everything in there is essentially just drag and drop.

So if you want to quickly and easily create that form and add those basic needs, well, Google Forms might be the best solution for you.

The second reason why you might want to choose Google Forms is if you need to create a large number of forms that are temporary in purpose.

And what I mean by that is if you're quickly sending out little quizzes, or sending out a few things in a form that may only last a week in duration, for example, well, then this might be the ideal form builder for you.

Here, I've just thrown together a very quick and easy Beatles Trivia form.

This is just something fun that I wanna send out to my followers, but I'm not needing to update this in the future.

I'm not gonna be needing to come back and analyze this data.

It's sort of quick and easy, and I can almost forget about this form in a few weeks' time.

So if you're needing to send out a number of forms in short order, but you really don't need all of that data in the future, Google Forms also might be the best solution for you.

Now, the third reason why you may want to select Google Forms is if you're okay with your forms looking like Google Forms.

What do I mean by that?

Well, yes, we can customize a number of things here.

I could come up here into my theme options.

I could change this header.

I can change my colors, including the background color as well, but at the end of the day, all Google Forms essentially look like a Google Form.

It's gonna look very similar to this.

If I jump over here into preview mode, you can see it's sort of this column look in the middle.

I've got this submit button down here, and it's always going to say Google Forms at the bottom of the page.

Now, if you're okay with that, that's absolutely fine.

However, if you want to stand out from the crowd, if you want to perhaps look a little more professional, well, then maybe there's a better solution for you.

Why you should choose Jotform

Now, JotForm is not only one of the most popular form builders, but it's also one of the highest-rated form builders, currently with a score of 4.7 on the G2 website.

But numbers aside, let's dive into the software itself.

Now, the first reason why JotForm may be a better solution for you is customization.

JotForm lets you customize every single aspect of your form.

Here we are within the form builder area, and on the right-hand side, you can see under Form Designer, I can swap out any single color or image.

I can adjust the styles and formatting to my heart's content.

But that customization doesn't just end with the colors and look, it also has to do with the types of elements in which we'd like to add to our form.

So, yes, you're gonna find all these standard things such as a dropdown and multiple choice, but maybe you need to add a signature to your form.

When someone completes it, you want to collect or add a digital signature.

You can do that.

How about an appointment?

Well, it's just drag and drop.

If I want someone to book an appointment after they've answered all of my questions, well, I can add that to my forms as well.

So there's just so many different things and different ways in which you can customize your JotForm.

But the customization doesn't just stop at the things that you can put inside your form, it also continues with how you want your form to be displayed.

So in this case, I'm gonna view this form that I created earlier.

And check out this one.

"Join our newsletter and receive a FREE guide."

Yeah, this looks very enticing the way that this form is laid out.

I'm gonna input my name and hit Next.

I'm gonna input my email address here and hit Submit, and now I've got a beautiful thank you page here as well.

Didn't that look a lot more flashier, a lot more enticing for your participants or your clients?

A lot of customization here that you can use to wow your audience.

The second reason why JotForm might be ideal for your needs is when it comes to integrations.

When you're collecting information, when you're sending out all of these surveys or request forms, or however you're using your forms, chances are you want that data to go somewhere else, such as a project management tool, maybe a CRM system, or a variety of other pieces of software.

Well, here under Integrations, we can see that JotForm integrates with more than 100 other applications, many of the tools that you're already using.

So if you want your information to directly store within Dropbox, you can do so as well.

In fact, look at here on the left-hand side, just under our Categories.

Let's take a look at CRM Integrations.

So whether you use HubSpot, or Zoho CRM, or Salesforce, or Pipedrive, you can have those forms directly be sent and input into your CRM system.

How about Project Management?

We've got most of the popular tools here, including Trello, Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, Wrike and Basecamp.

So when someone fills out that form, you can convert that information directly into a new task or into a new project.

So you can look at all of the various different integrations and make sure that your collected data doesn't just end up on a spreadsheet somewhere.

Now, the third reason why JotForm may be the better solution for you is if you need to collect payments.

Over here on the left-hand side of the form elements, you can see we have a Payments tab.

And look at the number of different ways in which we can collect payments.

Now Square, PayPal, and Stripe are perhaps among the most popular, but there's a variety of other payment processors in which you can add as well.

So, for example, if I wanna add my PayPal Business account, all I need to do is drag it onto my form.

And in a matter of seconds, I've got my payment method right down here.

So people can choose if they want to pay by debit or credit card, or if they want to pay directly with their PayPal account.

So not only can I collect information about my prospective clients right here within my form, I can turn them into actual customers by providing them with a payment method and providing them with payment processors that they know and trust.

So when they submit that form, not only do I get the information, but I get paid as well.

So in summary, if your form-building needs are relatively basic or you need to create a number of short-term forms and you don't mind it looking like everyone else's forms, Google Forms might be just right for you.

However, if you're needing customization, if you want your forms to integrate directly with other apps that you're already using, or if you need to collect payments, JotForm may be the better choice for you.

Now, if you have any other form builders that you'd like to recommend, or share your feedback on JotForm or Google Forms, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Intro

No matter how often you deliver PowerPoint presentations, you want your audience to be amazed and impressed with whatever it is you have to share.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven tips to help make your PowerPoint presentations look awesome and that much more memorable.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Change Cursor Pointer

So let's start off with tip number one, and this has to do with our mouse cursor.

I'm just gonna go into presentation mode for this particular slide.

How often do you see someone using the standard basic mouse cursor to draw your attention?

I want you to look at this word over here, and then I want you to come over here and look at something else that I'm wiggling around or swirling my mouse cursor around.

Well, there's a much better way.

If we right-click on the screen and come about halfway down on this menu, we have some pointer options.

The first one is called a laser pointer.

And if I select this, I get a little red laser.

So if I wanna draw my attention to a particular word or an image or a diagram, I can do so here with this laser pointer, but I've got other options available to me as well.

I can use this pen option for example.

And if I want you to really focus on all the apps on your phone, I can do so here.

If I want to underline this automated word, I can do so as well.

The last option we have available to us here is a highlighter, and we can actually change that color if we want to.

But by default, if I want to maybe highlight this word "web," I can just sort of run over it a few times.

Maybe highlight this word "you" for example, I can highlight certain things on my screen.

So not only do things come more to life, it is much easier for your audience to follow you along.

Align All Your Objects

Now our next tip has to do with making you look great on every single slide.

And one of my pet peeves is when I'm watching someone else's presentation, and they have things out of alignment.

Whether it's text or images or whatever it is on their slide, they've got things out of place.

This is such an easy fix so that all of your slides can look great.

Here in this example, I've got four different images that are really all over the place.

In fact, these two are sort of overlapping a bit and they are certainly not in alignment.

So in order to fix this, all I need to do is select all of the objects that I want to align.

So in this case, I'm gonna select these four options.

Oops, I didn't get that last one there.

I got all four images at this place, and then I need to come up here to arrange, and under arrange, we have the option to align.

Now, in this case, I'm gonna align in the middle and you can see everything automatically gets aligned into this middle.

But let's go one step further.

I'm gonna come back to arrange and we're gonna come back to align, and another one that I use quite often is either distribute horizontally or vertically.

Well, in this case, I wanna distribute horizontally, so I'm gonna select this option and now I've got even spacing between all four options.

So when I go to present this slide, it looks professional, it looks neat, it's quick and easy.

Often just takes you a few clicks, and you can make sure everything is in line on your slides.

Animate Text or Images

Next up, let's talk a little bit about how we can add some polish and pizazz to some of our slides.

One of the things that I like to do is make some of my images move just in a little subtle way.

Animate Text or Images So if I'm talking and I'm going to be on this slide for a few minutes, there's something else that is going on.

This can really add a little bit of oomph to your slides and really make you stand out from other presentations.

So in this case, what I want to do is I want this image, this bell icon to sort of teeter back and forth just very slowly, just very gently as I'm talking about this concept.

So what I need to do is select, select the image or images that I'd like to move, and you're probably already familiar with some of these basic animations here.

I'm gonna select for more options and what I want to look for here is emphasis.

These are things I don't want to fade in or fade out, I just want to emphasize this particular image.

So I'm gonna select teeter in this case, and you can see it just teetered there for a little bit, but that's not what I want.

I don't want it to teeter once and I also don't want it to do it at that speed.

So in order to get some more options here, I'm gonna select it and then select the animation pane.

So now to adjust some of my options, all I'm gonna do is select this down arrow beside the animation.

Now by default, when you add any animation, it's going to start on a click, but I just want to transition into this slide and have it happen automatically.

So in this case, I'm gonna select start after previous.

So now it's going to happen as soon as I transition into this slide.

I don't have to press the space bar, I don't have to click anything else, but then we also want to come down here and select effect options.

So in this case, we want to come over here to the timing option.

And we're gonna say we want the duration to be a lot slower, in this case, I'm gonna say slow so about three seconds in duration, and I'm also gonna come down here to repeat, and I'm gonna say repeat until the end of the slide, meaning I want it to happen the entire time that I'm on this slide until I transition out.

So let's hit okay on this one, and now we're gonna go back into presentation mode.

So now you can see, I haven't initiated anything, I've just simply opened up this particular slide.

It just gives this slide a little something extra special, something else that's going on as I'm presenting my deck.

Morph Transitions

But if you really want to wow your audience, then you're gonna want to learn how to morph between two slides.

Morph Transitions Morphing a slide is designed when you want to emphasize something that is already on this slide.

So in this example, what I want to happen is have this image, this bell icon grow larger and move to the right-hand side.

Then I want this text here at the bottom to move to the left-hand side of the screen and be larger.

So the first step that we need to do here is actually duplicate the slide.

So I'm simply going to copy and then paste this slide so I've got two exact versions of this slide.

Then all I need to do is select the top version.

This is the version that we're starting from, and then I'm gonna select transitions.

Instead of fade, I want to select morph.

Fade is usually my particular default as I'm naturally fading in between my slides, but in this case, I am going to say morph.

Now what I want to do is go to my second slide.

Remember, it's identical at this stage, but now I'm going to make those changes.

So for example, I'm gonna take this image.

I'm gonna move it to the right and I'm gonna make it significantly larger.

Then I'm gonna take this text over here.

I'm gonna move it to the left-hand side.

I'm gonna change some of its dimensions.

And I'm also going to make the text quite a bit larger.

So instead of 40, let's bump it up to maybe something like, oh, I don't know, something like 66, something like this.

I really want to emphasize this point.

I really want to get my audience's attention.

So it's the same content.

It's the same content on both slides.

It's just rearranged in a different manner.

Now in order for this to work, you need to make sure that both of the slides that you want to morph have morph selected as their transition.

Let's select this first one and go into presentation mode and see what happens.

I'm now gonna transition to that second slide.

And did you see how everything moved nice and smoothly?

This bell icon got nice and large and my text very smoothly moved to the left and then transitioned into a larger font.

Let me just go back and forth here just to show you what is going on.

Isn't that gonna wow your audience?

Remove Image Background

Now, of course, any awesome PowerPoint presentation is going to have a variety of images and pictures.

But another one of my personal pet peeves is when everyone is using these standard square or rectangular images within their slides.

So let's take a look at this one here for an example.

I want to quickly and easily remove the background of this image, but I don't want to have to load it in some other application.

I don't want to have to search for a transparent background.

I like this hand with this phone, I just want to get rid of this background.

Well, all I need to do is select this image and then come up here and select picture format.

And the very first option on the left-hand side is remove background.

If I select this, you can see it actually makes the entire background purple.

However, I can make a few tweaks and modifications.

I can see that the lower part of the arm here is actually going to be removed if I select keep changes, but I have the choice to mark areas to keep, but also mark areas to remove.

So in this case, I'm gonna select mark areas to keep, I'm gonna come down here with the stylus and select that part of the arm.

I'm gonna do it maybe one more time, there we go.

Now I've got the entire arm and I get to select keep changes.

Now the background is removed and I can add this to any part of my slide as I want.

This is gonna look a lot more clean and a lot more professional as I add text here on the right-hand side.

So don't forget to remove the background of certain images, which you find online.

Add a Countdown Timer

Now the next one on our list has to do when you're giving a presentation and perhaps there's either an exercise or a break that needs to be included in between.

I think one of the biggest challenges as a presenter is that even though you tell people that we're only gonna take a 10-minute break, everyone's watch is a little bit out of sync.

And maybe there's not a clock in the room, or depending on where you're delivering this, perhaps virtually, not everyone is getting back in time.

Well, let's make that easier by adding a countdown timer to do the work for us right within our slides.

So all I need to do is come up here to insert and select get add-ins.

And this is gonna open up the Office add-in store.

Now in the search bar here, we can type in things such as timer or in my case, I'm gonna type in countdown and then hit search, and there's gonna be a variety of ones for you to choose from.

I'm gonna select this one, which is called a break time and say add.

Yes, I'm gonna give it permissions here by selecting continue, and now I've added a timer directly to my slide.

Now I can make some changes here.

Let's say I want to only make this a five-minute break so I'm gonna select five minutes there.

It even comes with a few different themes, so if I want to add something here like this glass of water, I can do so as well.

So now when I open up this slide, I can start this timer myself, initiate the countdown, and that control panel will fade away into the background so it looks clean.

It looks professional, and now everyone knows when we will return to the presentation.

Live Polls with Slido

Now engaging your audience is so important, maybe even more so if you're delivering your presentation virtually.

That's why I've been adding live polling to every single one of my PowerPoint presentations for the last few years.

Now in this case, I'm using an extension called Slido.

Slido allows me to insert polls directly into my PowerPoint slides so I don't have to open anything else up.

First, let me show you how it works.

So let's say that I'm on this slide that we created earlier.

I'm gonna go into presentation mode, but I'm just going to transition to my very next slide, which happens to be a Slido live poll.

So now I can ask my audience what's their favorite shoe brand, and they can participate in this fun poll in real time.

Slido also makes it very easy for people to join the poll.

All they need to do is go to this website, enter in a code, which you get to choose, or they can scan their by using this QR code.

This is an incredibly fun and engaging way to keep your audience participating and engage with the content which you're delivering.

Conclusion

Now I can't go into all of the details of how to use Slido, but if you would like my full tutorial of how to integrate live polling into your PowerPoint presentation, be sure to click the video you see on the screen now.

And if you have some favorite tips and tricks for using PowerPoint, I'd love to hear from you.

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

CRM Software

Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur? If so, you know how valuable it is to save time and money. That's why in this video, I'm gonna share with you seven different types of software that every single small business needs to know, and I'm gonna be giving you a recommendation in each of those categories.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you own or operate a small business, well, then you have customers. And if you have customers, you need a customer relationship management system, better known as a CRM.

Why is a CRM system so important to you? Will you need a centralized place to keep track of all of your clients, even if many of them are just prospective clients? And when you're dealing with clients, you need to deal with, well, deals getting to the end sale, no matter what that product or no matter what that service is that you're selling.

Here I am within the Bigin CRM system, which is especially designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Now, Bigin is developed by Zoho CRM, which is one of the most popular and well-reviewed CRMs on the planet. However, Zoho CRM, along with some other CRMs, such as Salesforce, may be much too much for your needs and also a little expensive.

So at the fraction of the cost and with small business owners in mind, Bigin might be the ideal solution for you. So, here we have a list of different deals that I have going on. And why is this so important within your CRM system? Well, you want to know exactly where someone is within your funnel, within your pipeline as we see here.

So for example, I've got a client which is qualified. Maybe they've reached out to me for an initial conversation, but then I've got other clients here where I've actually given them a quote or a proposal. I can quickly and easily see where people are within this stage and hopefully, move them on along this process until the deal is won and they actually become a paid customer.

But the great thing here is that all of your contacts and those contacts, if they belong to other companies, stay in a single place. So for example, if I open up this deal right here, I can see further details in terms of the history of this deal, when it was added and what was going on within this deal. I can take notes and even see an email history here right here within Bigin.

But the great thing is, is that my contact information stays here as well. So if I click on Alison over here, I'm gonna jump over to the Contact section. I can see all that information here as well. So whether she is a brand new customer, whether she's a returning customer, I've got a complete history here, right within my CRM system.

Calendar Scheduling

Now, the second type of software, I think every small business needs is a scheduling tool, a quick and easy way for you to book things with your clients, or maybe just people that help you with your business. In my case, my recommendation is Calendly. I've been using Calendly for a number of years to make booking, meetings, and also booking consulting sessions with myself that much easier.

And you've probably booked a Calendly meeting with someone else, even if you're not currently a Calendly user. So for example, I can share this link, and my users can go directly to this screen and book times that are most convenient for them. Now, the great thing is, is that I can set up a number of rules as to when someone can book me, not just the times of day, but also which days of the week and how far out they can book.

In this example, you can see that no one can book me on Mondays or Wednesdays, I've reserved that for other activities, but you can also see, they can't book me beyond the 13th of October, why? Because I've set up a rule that I only want to allow people to book me 21 days in advance. So it's convenient for me, the person sharing that link, but it's also convenient for the user who can pick a day that suits them.

They can pick a time and select Confirm, and then enter in their details here. And added bonus is that Calendly makes it very easy for us to add payments directly to our booking. So in this case, if I am hosting or inviting someone to a consulting session, and I want to make sure that they complete payment as a part of the booking process, I can do so right here within Calendly.

Video Conferencing

Now, setting up your meetings is one thing, but next up, you're gonna have to actually have these meetings. So the next essential piece of software is a video conferencing tool. Now, there's a number of tools for you to choose from, but for me, my standard has been Zoom Meetings. In fact, I've been a zoom user since roughly 2016.

I use it for virtually all of my meetings and also for hosting my webinars and other events. Zoom is my choice because not only is it easy to launch a meeting and manage an admin and set all of the controls here, but I also find it's easiest for my clients to engage with. Let me start this new meeting right here, and let me say hello, there I am within my Zoom Meeting.

So of course, you want to choose a tool where it's easy and quick for you to set up either a one-time meeting or recurring meetings, but maybe just as important is how easy it is for your clients or the people that you're meeting with to join that meeting. And in my experience, Zoom is the easiest of all of the major players.

It doesn't matter if the people that I'm meeting with have advanced technology skills or they're basic users. I find that everyone finds Zoom very easy to deal with, and it has become just such of a standard over the past two years. So you're looking for something that is quick, simple, and easy, Zoom Meetings would be my video conferencing tool of choice.

But now that you're having all of these meetings, you probably have a number of projects on your plate. So let's see what I recommend when it comes to project management.

Project Management

Now, there are many different project management tools to choose from but if you're a small team, if you have less than 10 employees, my recommendation would be to start off with Trello, why? I find that Trello has the shortest learning curve so that you and other members of your team can get going and actually get stuff done in the first few days.

You don't have to wait weeks or months to get used to the system, you can start seeing the benefits right away. Now at first glance, you may think that this looks an awful lot, like the CRM we looked at at the beginning of the video. And in many ways, most Trello boards are designed for a similar concept of dragging a task or dragging a project from left to right.

But unlike the Bigin CRM that we talked about earlier, in this case, we are talking about projects. So these don't represent new deals, in this particular example, this represents things that you're actually working on. So maybe you need to redesign your website, maybe you need to use a project management tool to manage all of your content, for example.

Trello is an ideal place to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that you can move things through their different processes. Trust me, as someone who's been providing Trello consulting services for nearly 10 years, I have yet to find an industry that cannot benefit from using the Trello system.

Email Marketing

So now that your business is up and running, and you have customers, and you're selling products and services, it's so important for you to keep in touch with your customers or to reach out and communicate with prospective clients. And with that, you're going to need an email marketing tool.

Now, there's a number of tools out there at various price points and different features but Mailchimp might be the best place to start. It's almost that perfect balance between costs but also with how easy it is for you to set up and get going. So here I am within my Mailchimp dashboard, and the great thing about an email marketing tool is that, it manages all of those subscriptions and people who sign up for your newsletters or future announcements, which you want to send to.

But the great thing is, is that not only does it make it easy for you to send out mass communications, you can see detailed statistics on those messages. So for example, here, I'm taking a look at some data from a previous campaign, I can see quickly and easily, what was the open rate, for example, on this particular email, What were the clicks per unique open?

How many total clicks? And other statistics that are gonna be helpful for me. But if I click this campaign in particular, I can go into a little more detail as well. Now, one of my favorite pieces of data that I like to look at right here within MailChimp is Click Performance. Meaning, where did people actually click on the email itself?

So in this particular campaign, this particular message which I sent out, I was encouraging people to go to this link. In fact, there was only one destination within this email, but if I view the click map, you can see, I actually gave them a few different places to access that link, a few traditional links here, I also included a button.

And now beside it, I can see what percentage of the people who clicked, chose which option, so this is gonna be really helpful for me as I'm creating new emails and new campaigns in the future. So for example, it looks like this Register Now button with this green color right in the middle, was perhaps the most successful but not too far behind was this very first link here as well. So great data, great details that I can use to market to my clients and my customers.

Social Media Management

But of course, email is not the only way in which you run your business. You want to make sure you have a presence on social media as well, so you're going to need a social media manager. In this case, we're taking a look at Buffer, which I use to manage and schedule out all of my social media in advance.

So, if you're not familiar with a social media manager, what you can do, is connect your various social media accounts. So for example, here, on the left-hand side, I have a Facebook account and Instagram account and a LinkedIn account, and then I can create content and schedule it or set it up in a queue, so it goes out at specific times or specific intervals.

So here you can see in the next few days on the next week, I've got some specific pieces of content, which will be posted on my Facebook channel. And if I want to, I can post the exact same thing across my channels, or be a lot more specific. If I click on the calendar up here at the top, I'm just gonna take a glance at the month view.

Here, you can see a history of all of the things, which I've posted in the last month. So I can go back and review and also see the data from those postings as well. Something like Buffer makes it so easy for us to create new content, all I need to do is click up here on this space, select which channels, for example, I want to include, maybe I want all three, maybe I want just two.

Write my content down below, maybe add an image or a video and then schedule it or just send it all right here from within Buffer. So not only is it going to save you time, it's going to keep you engaged with your audience on your various social media channels.

Accounting Software

Last but not least, if you run a small business, you need accounting software, you need a tool, which is going to give you an accurate representation of where your money is going and where your money is coming from. Now, my recommendation for you is to use QuickBooks online, not only for its ease of use, but also for the number of integrations in which it connects with other tools that you may already use, including your bank accounts, credit cards, and other tools that you're using to receive payment.

Trust me, you don't want to wait too long before starting to use a real accounting piece of software. You don't wanna miss out on those tax advantages and you also don't wanna come up short at the end of each month. Now, if you have questions about any of the app categories or the specific tools in which I've mentioned here in today's video, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and give this video a like. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Battling background sound in meetings

If you work with a computer, I can pretty much guarantee that you're involved in a lot of online meetings, whether that's Zoom, Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or any other app you're meeting with others virtually.

But even if you have a great camera, even if you've invested in good audio, what about all of those things that are out of your control?

And yes, I'm talking about background noise. I'm talking about noisy neighbors.

I'm talking about a spouse or a roommate or a pet or maybe even construction that is going on outside.

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at Krisp, a simple but very easy-to-use technology which is going to remove all of that background noise.

No matter how noisy it is in your environment, you're going to sound clean and professional to everyone that you're meeting with.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

At first glance, you may think that your home office or your home environment is the only application for Krisp.

But I think there's two other areas that we need to keep in mind.

Number one, what if you happen to be working from a different remote location, such as a coffee shop or maybe a noisy airport?

A location where you need to take that call but you have very little control, if no control, over those background noises.

Krisp is fantastic for those situations.

Lastly, even if you work in a traditional closed-door office, that doesn't make it immune from an awful lot of noise.

More and more of us work from an open office concept, and that means a lot of noise from your coworkers, from people walking by, from maybe other meetings or other phone calls within the vicinity, and you can't control that noise either.

So whether you're at home, at a remote location, or even in the office, Krisp might be the best solution for you.

How to setup Krisp on your computer

So how does it work?

And maybe more importantly, does it really do what it promises when it comes to removing background noise?

In order to install Krisp, all you need to do is go to krisp.ai.

The great thing is that they have a free forever plan, so you don't have to pay for anything if you don't want to.

Krisp is available for both Mac and Windows.

Once you've installed it, you can open up the app.

Here I am within my Windows machine, and I'm opening up the taskbar and selecting the Krisp icon.

It's just a small application that sits on your computer with a very, very simple interface.

The idea is that you're going to run or choose which microphone is going to go through the Krisp software.

So, for example, here within the Krisp dialog, I've got a microphone section here and I've got a speaker section down below.

Here I can choose which microphone I want to be using.

I want to keep it with my Yeti.

I actually do want to keep it as my default here for my speakers as well, but you can choose whatever you have connected with your system.

It'll even give you a little helpful idea here as to what is currently being used with that microphone.

In my case, because I'm recording this video, it's using Camtasia to record what's going through my microphone at the moment.

Below you can see there is a very simple toggle switch where we can remove the noise.

We can turn this on or we can toggle it off, so you don't always have to be using Krisp if you don't want to.

But I think what you're gonna find out is you're probably going to want to leave this on, especially when you're in meetings.

Now, the Krisp interface does give us the ability to test out its noise cancellation ability in advance.

This is probably a good choice before you use Krisp for the first time just to see how effective it is going to be within your environment.

But why don't we take Krisp through a real task?

I wanna use the actual toggle here and not just the test functionality.

Testing how effective Krisp is with noise

What I've decided to do is to pull up a video on YouTube.

It's something that is called 10 hours of busy coffee shop background noise.

No, we're not gonna use 10 hours to do so, but something to recreate that background noise.

When I turn this on, I'm gonna put this just a few inches, like literally maybe 9 to 12 inches from the microphone just to see how effective this can be.

I'm gonna press play and I'm sure you can see what or you can hear what's going on at the moment.

You can hear that there's some dishes clanging in the background.

There's some muffled conversations that are happening there as well.

Now remember, remove noise is toggled off.

This is basically just my live microphone with this noise going on in the background.

Now with that background noise continuing to go, let's hit our remove noise toggle and hear the difference.

Is it gone?

It's almost gone completely.

I can't hear it at all.

Can you hear it on your end?

You may notice that my voice sounds slightly different than it did before or earlier in the video.

There's a reason for that because Krisp is having to use that technology to remove that background noise.

But now you can focus on me and what I'm saying and what I have to share within the video conference.

Let's stick with this and I'm gonna hit the remove noise toggle again, so now that background noise has returned, right?

It's back in the picture.

You can hear it.

It's probably distracting you in addition to distracting me as well.

If I turn it on, once again, instantaneously, it's removed all of that background noise even though this video is still playing just a few inches from the microphone.

How Krisp removes participant noise

Not only will Krisp help you to sound and look more professional, but you can actually remove background noise from other people that you're meeting with.

You're probably curious as to why under the speaker section there is also a remove noise option.

What this is going to do when you toggle is going to remove the background noise from the people that you're meeting with.

Perhaps your colleague just can't keep their dog quiet.

Or perhaps someone else is working in an area where there's a lot of construction going on outside.

You can hit this switch and remove their background noise as well.

Keep in mind, this is not going to have any effect on anyone else in the meeting.

This is just for your speakers or for your earbuds.

But it's gonna help you to focus on the conversation at hand.

You won't have to go searching for the mute button or asking someone to mute themselves constantly despite their noisy background.

Krisp plans and pricing

Taking a quick look at pricing, great news!

You can use Krisp absolutely free and free for forever.

Their personal plan costs you absolutely nothing and gives you 240 minutes a week of noise removal.

That's four hours each week for either microphone or speaker noise removal.

If you're needing more than that, more than four hours per week, you can upgrade to their Personal Pro plan, which is just $5 per month billed yearly.

You can see that their Teams option is the exact same price as the Personal Pro option.

It's just easier to manage and gives you a few more team management features.

So if you'd like to stop worrying about all that background noise and also stop getting angry at your kids and pets, you can download Krisp for free and start using it right away.

Be sure to click the link in the description below for more details.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Everyone uses a calendar

It doesn't matter if you're a student, a business owner, an employee, or a stay-at-home parent, you've got a calendar to manage.

If you use Google Calendar, sometimes those things and events can get out of control.

So in today's video, I wanna give you some tips and tricks to get your calendar back into control so you can get the most out of your day.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Perhaps your Google Calendar looks like a bit of a rainbow.

Maybe there's a number of different colors, a number of different events, appointments, and engagements.

Reduce the number of calendars you manage

My first tip for you is to ask yourself, how many calendars do you actually need?

Let me explain, here in Google Calendar, one of the benefits is that we can have multiple calendars and by doing so, we can toggle them on or off at any given time.

This can be a great advantage to see just a certain type of events at any given stage.

But far too often, I see that people have way too many calendars, whether it's something that they've subscribed to or calendars that they've shared with others.

My question to you is, how many do you actually need?

For example, I've seen people create a separate calendar just for their baseball practices.

However, those practices just happen two times a week.

Do you really need a separate calendar for something that happens as little as once or twice a week?

You could probably add that to your personal calendar or to some other calendar that also includes those events.

The other nice thing by reducing the total number of calendars that you have to manage is that if you do happen to unable or hide one of these calendars here, and then you won't forget, or at least you reduce your chances of forgetting something that should have been made available to you here, but was actually hidden here on the left-hand side.

So this might be a great time to audit all of the calendars that you've created, or perhaps the ones that you've subscribed to, and actually remove some of them, so you can remove some of the clutter here.

Events are not your only option

My second tip for helping you keep your Google Calendar under control is to keep in mind that not everything needs to be an event.

Often, we're so quick to add things on our calendar that are not necessarily time-specific and really what we're wanting is a reminder instead.

Let's remember that Google Calendar has a reminder function built right in.

The great thing is, is that if you don't acknowledge that reminder, it will carry over into the next day.

So let's say, for example, I want to call someone later this evening.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on the desire time, I'm gonna click on 7:00 PM.

But instead of creating an event, I'm gonna come over here and select Reminder.

Right away, it's a lot easier because I've got much fewer options to choose from.

I'm gonna say Call Bill in this case and I can make it repeating if I want to, but I'll gonna leave it as is and hit Save.

Now you can see, I've created this reminder for 7:00 PM.

I will receive a notification not only here on desktop but especially on my mobile device, so I can make that phone call.

But if I don't acknowledge it, if I don't check off the reminder, here you can see if I open it up, I can select Mark as done.

If I don't mark it as done, this will carry over into tomorrow and will show as an all day event.

The great thing about reminders is that they don't get left behind.

Keep in mind that reminders do not have to be time-specific.

Maybe there's just something that I'd like to do tomorrow.

All I need to do is click on the all day event area, select Reminder, and I'm gonna say Email Craig regarding the meeting.

It's as simple as that and I can get on with the rest of my day.

Many times, I'll have many more reminders as all day events keeping the rest of my schedule nice and cluttered free.

But again, these won't be left behind because if I don't accomplish it on Thursday, it will automatically transition to the following day.

Customize your notification settings

Now, another great way to get your calendar under control is to change when you receive reminders and notifications.

For example, if I click on this event here, I can see that I'm gonna be notified 10 minutes in advance.

This is the default when you first signed in to your Google Calendar.

However, you can not only change this default to something that is more meaningful to you, you can also change it for the different calendars that you manage right here within Google Calendar.

In order for us to do so, we wanna come up here to the gear icon and select Settings.

On the left-hand side, we first need to start with the calendar in which we want to change those default notifications.

Here I've selected my personal calendar and under Event notifications, I'm gonna say, you know what, I'd rather be notified just a few minutes in advance.

Three minutes is a enough, so I'm gonna leave at three.

I don't have to hit Save or anything else on this screen, it's now gonna be a default of three minutes.

However, if I go to something like my Exercise Calendar, maybe I want a notification further out.

In this case, I'm gonna ask for a 45-minute notification.

You can also add multiple notifications if you like, including email notifications.

So maybe I want to remind myself a full hour and a half via email that I'm gonna be exercising later today, I can do so here as well.

So don't be afraid to change your default event notifications if you find your existing ones are not as helpful as they could be.

Now, if you're dealing with a very busy calendar,

Quickly find the event you're looking for

you're probably also wasting a lot of time because it can be difficult to find that particular appointment that you're looking for, whether it's far into the future, or maybe sometime in the past.

You're probably already familiar with the search feature here in the top right-hand corner.

If we select the magnifying glass, the cursor is ready and waiting for us to input some information.

However, don't forget about the dropdown area here, which will give us some more advanced search options.

For example, we can just search the active calendars, meaning the ones that we've checked on the left-hand side, or we can search all calendars or just a specific subset or a specific calendar.

We can also choose to include a specific keyword, search who is a part of the event or where that event is happening.

We can also eliminate some words but perhaps the most powerful of all is to set a date range or a date spectrum to see where you want to search.

So if you're having trouble finding that particular event, be sure to use the advanced search feature.

Of course, I'm very interested to hear on how you manage your calendar as well.

And if you have tips and tricks to provide to the Simpletivity community.

If so, be sure to include them in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Is your project software too simple or too complex?

You have an awful lot of choice when it comes to your project management tools.

However, some may be too simple for your needs.

Even though Trello, Asana, and Notion are very popular, they may not give you all the features that you're looking for.

But on the other side of the spectrum, something like Microsoft Project may be too advanced.

And let's be honest, your parents probably used MS Project, maybe even one of your grandparents.

So in today's video, we're taking a look at GanttPRO, which is maybe the ideal middle ground.

It gives you more features than Trello and Asana yet is not as complex and much easier to use than MS Project.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

I'm going to assume that you're somewhat familiar with what a Gantt chart is.

A Gantt chart gives us a view of our projects, our costs, and our time commitment here on a timeline view.

However, don't let the name GanttPRO fool you because GanttPRO is so much more than just this view and just looking at your projects and all of your tasks here.

Why a Gantt Chart view is so important

First, let's answer the question: why is a Gantt chart view so important?

You may recognize with some of the other tools that you use, that they will have a timeline view or some type of Gantt chart view, but it's usually an afterthought.

They started to build their project management system, and then they've got requests to give them a Gantt chart view.

However, you probably are not seeing as many details as we see here.

The fantastic thing about a Gantt chart is that you can see the dependencies in terms of what has to happen first before something else can happen.

And then on top of that is allocating all of your resources.

In most cases, those resources are human-based—who is working on this project?

Do they have enough time to commit to it?

And if everything goes as planned, when should this project be due?

The great thing is that it's very, very visual.

Here we can see in this case, if I drag over to the right-hand side, we can see that this project should be finished by October 20th.

If everything goes as planned as we've estimated here, we can finish up near the end of October.

However, as things change and as certain things are either delayed, or maybe if certain things finish earlier than others, then this due date is going to be dynamic, and that it's going to adjust forward.

So you can see these things in real-time, and every member of your team can update their status and see what is going on.

Different views of your project and resources

However, if you don't need a view like this, or don't want to see this view at all times, GanttPRO has you covered.

There is a board view, so if you are more familiar with a kanban style of working with your projects, the idea of dragging things over into a done column is available.

For example, if I want to open up this target markets task, I can open up and see all of the details within.

Here I can change the status of it.

I can add a description, add attachments, and even add dependencies here at this level, not always needing to view that Gantt chart view.

In addition to our board view, we can also see what the workload is for our staff members.

You don't know how many times someone has asked me, "Scott, how can I allocate resources appropriately within Trello?"

Well, here within GanttPRO, allocation and workload, including cost and time allocated, are built right in.

Here we can see how many hours everyone is scheduled or projected to work on this particular project.

The bonus is that we get to see when someone is over-allocated.

For example, here I can see that Ralph has a few hours over top of what he's actually available on those days.

I can either have a discussion with him and say, "Are you willing to work some overtime, or do we need to spread this out?

Or maybe can we assign some of these tasks to someone else on the team?"

In fact, it's perhaps the resource management and the people management which is such a great bonus here within GanttPRO.

Reports and budgeting in GanttPRO

For example, I'm gonna come over to the left-hand side of my screen and select reports.

Under reports, one of my favorites is called budget analysis because with any project that you're involved with, you're dealing not only with time but also cost.

I'm gonna minimize some of the other projects that I've been assigned to and take a look at our product launch.

This is what we were just looking at previously.

The great thing here is that I can see that it's going to take my team a total of 200 hours to complete this entire project.

I can also see that because of this and the different rates of each of my staff members, it's going to cost us just a little over $10,000.

However, up to this point in time, it has actually cost us $3,000 based on how much time and effort everyone has put in so far.

So with just a few clicks, I can see our resource management.

I can see if we're within budget, and I can appropriately and accurately tell my clients or tell my management team how much this project is going to cost.

In addition, if I return to my product launch screen, I can click on the people tab and actually see each member who is a part of this project.

In turn, I can adjust the cost per hour for each of my resources.

This is where that costing and budgeting information is coming from.

Now as someone who is responsible

Viewing bottlenecks and critical paths

for the outcome of a project, you wanna be able to quickly and easily see what is overdue and where you need to focus more of your team's attention.

GanttPRO makes it very easy for us to do so.

Here in the top left-hand corner, we can quickly and easily see which are the overdue tasks in this particular project.

You can see that immediately this required materials task is highlighted as being overdue.

So again, I may wanna have a conversation with my team members and investigate as to what is going on here.

GanttPRO also makes it easy for us to identify what is the critical path, meaning what is going to prevent us from moving forward.

In this case, I can see that this features and functions area of the project is currently our critical path.

Meaning that if something is delayed here, it is going to back up the rest of our entire project.

Share project status with public URL

Another great feature here within GanttPRO is the ability to share your project with others.

What I mean is sharing with those who are not directly involved with producing the project.

Obviously, all of the team members that you see here have access to GanttPRO and they're updating things along the way as they progress along their project.

But what about upper management or perhaps what about a client who would also like to have some insight as to what's going on here?

You may be hesitant to give them access because you don't want them to start adding notes or to adjusting certain columns or other attributes within the project.

But what GanttPRO allows us to do is to create a public URL.

So within this dialogue, I have the choice to either share without a filter or use the current filter that we're viewing this project with at this time.

I'm just gonna call this one, maybe project updates, something along those lines.

I can either create a snapshot in time, or I can give them a public URL, so as things change, maybe between the time when I send them the link and when they receive it, they can see those updates as well.

All I need to do is select this button, and as you can see down below, it's added to my list of other public URLs.

Now, at any time I can either delete or just turn off one of these URLs in case of privacy, in case I don't want to make them available to those who I've sent it to.

But in this case, all I need to do is copy this to my clipboard and then paste it within an incognito window, just so you can see what another individual will actually view here within GanttPRO.

It'll take just a few seconds to load the project depending on the complexity and the size, but here you can see now they can view the project and see the details as well.

People who now have access to this public URL can see the entire project, including the GanttPRO view and other details listed here.

However, it is a true read-only view.

You can confidently share your project with others outside of the given project team and know that they will only have a read-only view and can see those details

Importing data from Excel or MS Project

but without the ability to change them.

Best of all, if you're already using Excel, MS Project, or JIRA to manage your projects, you can quickly and easily import your project directly into GanttPRO.

And if you use something else such as Trello or Asana, you can export that information into a CSV file and then easily convert it into a GanttPRO project.

So if you're needing a project management system with advanced features yet still keeps things simple, be sure to check out GanttPRO.

You can start absolutely free using the link down below.

If you have any follow-up questions, be sure to let me know in the comments.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why backing up Trello is important

If you use Trello, you know how important all of your cards, lists, and multiple boards are to your business, your organization, or maybe even your personal life.

But what happens if something goes wrong?

What if someone on your team makes a mistake and deletes a whole bunch of cards?

Or what if you make a mistake and can't get something back?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at how to safely and securely back up all of your Trello data with Rewind Backups.

Hello, everyone.

Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Backing up our Trello data is so important.

For many of us, Trello is the lifeblood of our business or our organization, or even how we manage our personal life and our daily activities.

But what happens if something really, really bad goes wrong?

How are you going to get it back?

How to manually backup Trello boards

Well, there's a few manual ways in which you can back up your data.

But I'm gonna tell you upfront, it's going to leave you not only wanting more, but it's probably going to waste a lot of your time.

The very first option is for us to manually copy our boards from time to time.

If you open up the Menu on any of your boards and go to More, we can come down here and copy this board.

Now, I could give it a name such as Version Two or maybe the date in which I made this copy.

However, I'm gonna have to do this for every single one of my boards.

And I gotta have to remember to do this every, I don't know, every couple of days, once a week.

I've gotta come in here or assign someone else on my team to do this manually.

The other manual process we have available to us is to export our boards.

If I come over here and select Print and export, I can either export it as a CSV file, which you'll be able to view within your spreadsheet, or a JSON file, which is a lot more technical and a lot more advanced.

And you know what?

Congratulations, if you even know what a JSON file is.

In both of these cases, you are gonna be able to export this information, but not only are you only going to be able to do it one board at a time, Trello has no import functionality.

So, even though you can get this information out of Trello, there's really no way for you to revive that information other than manually heading this back in a worst-case scenario.

Automated Trello backups with Rewind

So, what do I recommend to my clients?

I recommend that they use Rewind Backups for Trello.

Why?

Because Rewind has been providing backup solutions for other products, such as Shopify and QuickBooks Online for years.

So not only can you trust them, but this is all that they do is back up resources for business owners and users like you.

Let's take a closer look at what Rewind Backups looks and feels like when it comes to backing up Trello.

Here I am within my Rewind Backups Vault, and what we're viewing here is actually all of my cards across all of my backed-up boards.

I can go through and look at the individual changes and make sure that certain things have been backed up.

The way that Rewind Backups works is that it will automatically back up all of the boards which you select on a nightly basis.

You don't have to remember anything at all.

Rewind Backups will always back up all of the boards which you select on a 24-hour basis.

However, maybe you've made some very significant changes, and you wanna make sure that they're backed up earlier than perhaps midnight this evening.

You will always have this Backup Now button available to you here, so you can do so at your own choosing.

As I go through and look at some of these individual cards, here I can see that this card was updated.

If I wanna view the versions, I can see the live version here on the left-hand side and the selected version or the version which was last backed up.

If I come over to this dropdown, I can see that there is actually a previous version, which did not contain a description.

So, this can be a quick and easy way for me to find out if I want to revert back or to see what's going on through the updating process.

You'll have a full history whenever you do so here within Rewind Backups.

If you're looking for something specific, you can always use the search field here to search for a certain keyword.

So if I type in something like vendor, I'll bring back all of the cards which have either been added or updated right here.

It'll also give us a filtering option.

So, if we want to filter out specific content, label changes, or a date range, we can easily and quickly do so right here within the Rewind Backups dashboard.

But perhaps the most powerful feature when it comes to Rewind Backups is the ability to restore our boards.

How to restore Trello boards to a previous version

Let's take a look at a quick example.

I've decided to use a split screen view so you can see this happen in real time.

On the left-hand side, I have one of my travel boards, and on the right-hand side, I have Rewind Backups opened up.

Let's say within my Trello board here, I'm gonna do something like archive everything in this list.

Everything in this list is going to go, and maybe I'm gonna start moving some other things from this pending list into that new list.

And of course, I could make a number of other changes as well.

I could delete cards, change labels, due dates.

Do absolutely anything here.

Once I've changed everything, what if I say to myself, "Oh, you know what I really would like to go back."

I shouldn't have done any of those changes, or maybe someone on my team made a big mistake.

All I need to do is come over here to Rewind Backups.

Under the Advanced Restore tab, I can come down here and select which of my boards I would like to restore.

In this case, yes, I want to select the example board, and I can now choose the date in which I'd like to go back to.

So here, I've got a choice of a number of different times.

I wanna go back to my last backup, which was actually just a few minutes ago, right?

Just a few minutes ago before I made those changes.

So, 11:58 is the most recent backup.

I'm gonna select that.

Then, I'm gonna select Restore Items.

It is going to give me a prompt, which I think is great.

Letting me know what is going to happen at this point.

It's going to try and restore everything back to exactly as it was just a few moments ago.

I'm gonna say yes, go ahead and start the restore process.

Now, it may take a little while…

Actually, nope.

We're back.

(Scott laughing)

Didn't even take a few seconds, no more than maybe three or four seconds, and we are exactly back to where we were before.

We've got the four cards that we had in this list.

And those two cards which I'd moved over are now back in this list as well.

So, that's how easy and how quickly you can restore any Trello board to its original point, depending on how frequently you want to restore your boards.

Remember, Rewind Backups will do so every single day, every single night, but you can choose to back up more frequently manually if you like.

Selecting which Trello boards to backup

Now, within the Rewind Backups dashboard, you have the power to select how many of your boards you would like to back up at any given time.

Here you can see, I currently have 26 boards selected, and I can either easily select an entire Trello workspace, or I can select or de-select individual boards.

In this case, these two boards will no longer be backed up.

The great thing about this is that you only have to pay for what you actually need.

Rewind Backups for Trello is only $1 per board per month.

That's right.

It doesn't make any difference as to how many users are on those boards.

It's $1 per board per month at a minimum of $5 a month.

Special offer for Simpletivity viewers

However, I have an extra special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

If you go to rewind.com/scott-friesen, you'll receive $50 in cash when you sign up for Rewind Backups.

And no, that's not $50 off of your subscription.

Rewind will send you $50 in cash for you to spend any way that you like.

So, if you're looking for a safe, secure, and easy way to back up all of your Trello boards, be sure to click the link in the description down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.