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This is too expensive, this is too complicated. And for many people, this might be too simple. So what project management tool won't break the bank is easy to use, yet still has advanced features for real people like you and me? Let's find out.

Views you want to use

Without question, you have an awful lot of choice when it comes to selecting your project management tool. Well, I might argue that Hive may be the very best user experience because it's built by users.

So in this video, I'm going to share with you five of my favorite features within Hive and why you may want to consider Hive for yourself or your team. Now, my number one reason for considering Hive is its multiple views and layouts.

And you may be surprised by that because most of our project management tools will offer a variety of different views.

But whether you prefer Trello or Asana or Monday or some other tool, you probably recognize that they do one view very, very well, and the other views tend to feel like add-ons or things where you can't quite do as much as their prominent view.

Well, here within Hive, not only do we have six different views, but they are all very, very functional. My first view here is the status view, or you might say a standard board view where we can drag and move things around between our different columns.

But a view that is often lacking in project management tools is a team view or viewing those responsibilities by individual members.

Within this view, I can quickly and easily see what I'm assigned, but also what other members of my team are assigned. And rather than just relying on a standard board style view where I would need to open up this card, come over here, select the person, and then select myself, do you know what's so much easier is working within this team view where I can simply just take this and drag it into my column.

That's a lot simpler, a lot faster, and makes a lot more sense depending on who is working on this project at a time. In addition, we have a fully functional Gantt chart view so we can manage our project from a timeline perspective and a table view if you prefer to sort things in a more Excel or spreadsheet-like manner.

Block time on your calendar

The second feature that I love about Hive are the little details that help me be more productive. Here within this particular task, I have all the details that I need to get started, including the due date as to when this should be finished.

But you know what I love about this is just below, we have a feature called Schedule time. How am I supposed to get this done unless I actually make time for it on my own calendar?

Well, all I need to do is select schedule time and my own personal calendar is brought up and I can take a look at the week in advance. Maybe I see a block of time here on Friday where I can dedicate to this particular task.

All I need to do is click and drag, and now that will be added to my Google calendar.

I'm going to select schedule, and now, I don't have to keep coming back to review what I should be doing when if I open up my calendar, here is exactly that time that I scheduled, and when I click on it, I have a direct link to that task. So it will open it up for me and I can immediately go back to work and start accomplishing this task.

Assign tasks with smart options

Speaking of little details that can make such a big and productive difference, I also love the way that Hive treats assignees.

Here we can see that this particular task is assigned to me, but when I click on my name, I can choose if I only want to assign one person at a time or if I want to allow multiple assignees. This is such a valuable feature that most other productivity tools do not include.

So for example, maybe when I'm done with my dependency or my sub-action, I'm going to go ahead and assign this to Kate. I didn't have to remove myself because I have it set to single one at a time. If I need to assign it to myself, I don't have to waste time or effort and go and remove Kate. But if this particular task does require multiple people or multiple eyeballs on it, I can simply select the multiple option.

Now I can go ahead and add a few more of my team members and assign them, and now we are all a part of this task. In addition, Hive has another feature that I absolutely love.

Sometimes when creating a project or a task, you don't know exactly which individual will accomplish the work, but you do know what type of skill set or maybe what type of role should be performing this task.

So here in this example, I've yet to assign anyone, and I'm not exactly sure if it's going to be Kate or Kelley who does this, but what I do know is I can use a placeholder since both of them are copywriters, I'm going to assign it as a copywriter role.

And then when it comes time to accomplish this task, I can allow our two copywriters to decide which one of them will take on this assignment.

Display goals and milestones

Now, a fourth feature that often gets overlooked when it comes to our project management software is creating an overarching goal or an overview of what is going on. Far too often, we set up our projects and they seem to be ongoing.

We're always going to have a number of things that are either unstarted, things that we're working on and things that are completed.

But what are some of those key milestones and are we staying on track? Well, here on the top-right hand corner, you can see that there is an overview section where we can see exactly how many things we've completed, how many things are overdue, and we can also see a summary of our project activity.

So this can be a great place to get caught up to see what has been going on and what is happening within that project.

We also have the opportunity to create our own status updates. So here you can see that just a few days ago, I've let the team know that we caught up in this month, "Nice job, we are back on track."

But if things change, I can come up here and create a new status update. Either we can be at risk or off track, something that everyone who is working on this project can easily see and keep in mind.

But on top of that, we can also create specific milestones and goals. Up in the top-right hand corner, if I select new and select goal, I can enter in a specific milestone. So in this example, perhaps a key goal that we have is to demo the new website to the customer.

I'm going to be the owner, and this is the date in which we need to do this by. And although this is often where we stop with a particular date, we can take things one step further and add a goal measurement.

So whether we want to calculate the number of actions completed or track the number of overdue actions, or maybe we want to manually enter in a number, we can select that here. And what is going to be the project source?

Well, we can say the specific projects and maybe there are two or more projects that are related to this milestone or related to this goal. You can select multiple projects here and go beyond just the scope of the space which you are working on.

You can even choose if you'd like to make another goal, a dependency in the case that you need to hit something else first before you're capable of achieving this goal. Now, when I create this goal, I can see exactly how close are we to completing this particular goal and see if we are on track in hitting that milestone.

User submitted roadmap

Now, the fifth reason why I love Hive as a project management tool is that they truly listen to their users.

Don't believe me? You can go to their public roadmap and see exactly what they're working on, what they are planned to deliver and what they are reviewing when it comes to user requests.

And Hive has a commitment to developing things that receive the most votes or the most amount of feedback here. So if you have a feature that you would like to add. Here, you can easily submit your own feature request or review the ones that have already been submitted, give your supporting vote so it can be included in a future version of Hive.

And Hive is so certain that you'll love their tool. They have a 90-day adoption guarantee. That's right. You can use Hive for a full three months, and if you don't love it, they will pay you back. Of course, you can always get started with their free forever plan, but if you do choose to upgrade to their team's version, you have this guarantee in place. T

o get started with Hive, just go to hive.com or click the link in the description down below.

hank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Do you want to get more out of your AI?

Well, then you better pay special attention to your prompts. So in this video I'm going to share with you seven essential prompts so you can get more done and enjoy less stress. 

Pretend to be someone else

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity. And while I could show you these prompts here within ChatGPT, there are so many other tools which allow us to be that much more productive.

So I'm actually going to show you these prompts within one of my favorite tools called Walling, and you'll see why in just a minute. And make sure you stay to the end of the video where I show you something that just might blow your AI mind.

So here within Walling, I can incorporate AI into almost any component. I'm going to right-click here and say, new brick with AI. And the first prompt that we want to pay attention to is the word pretend. 

Pretend is such a valuable keyword when we are interacting with AI because it allows us to take a closer look as to what someone else or maybe a customer base may be thinking.

So in this example, I'm asking the following, pretend you're a customer looking to redesign your website. What are you looking for? What pain points are you experiencing? And in just a few seconds, Walling has spit out both a current pain point summary, along with things that it may be looking for.

So maybe they're worried that their site is not mobile-responsive, maybe they also are worried that their site is outdated. And then down below here are some of the things that they are looking for. Our second keyword prompt is the word questions

Generate powerful questions

and questions are so valuable so that we can generate helpful or thought-provoking questions for our next meeting, or in this case, perhaps if we have an upcoming interview.

So let's say that I am interviewing a number of virtual assistants and I really want them to specialize in social media, but I haven't interviewed someone in a long time. I don't want to waste my time scrolling through a number of Google Search results.

So in this case, I've asked it to write five interview questions for a VA who specializes in social media. 

And in just a few seconds, I've got a number of great questions that I can choose to evaluate or start to use in my upcoming interview. Now, just like we saw that we can bold and edit things here within Walling, another fantastic use here is if we want to convert things. S

o in this case, you can see that it is a numbered list, and that makes a lot of sense, I asked it for five things, but maybe I want to turn it into a checklist.

So as I go through the interview itself, I can say, oh, I asked that question already and then I asked that question, or if I even want to give maybe a answer, such as a note, I could start to type in whatever it is they had to say directly here.

Create reusable templates

Now, the third AI prompt that I want you to start using is all about templates, because, why have to create the same thing over and over and over again when you can craft an excellent-looking template and repurpose it so you can save more time?

In this case, I'm asking it to write an email template that will be used to remind customers of upcoming delivery deadlines for holiday orders. Remember, I want to spend a little effort upfront creating one fantastic template that I can use dozens, maybe hundreds, or even thousands of times in the future.

And in just a moment, I'm presented with this template, including the proper formatting. 

Now, I appreciate that it's going to show me the brackets where I need to insert that specific information, such as the customer's name, such as specific dates, and, of course, my name or the company name down below.

But now I have something that is so much more actionable, something that I can use for an email template. And if I'm not done with it here, remember, we can still make this very actionable as a part of our project plans.

Here within Walling, we have a variety of different sections and ways in which we can group information. 

So here you can see I've got a number of tasks, and maybe this is just one of the tasks I want to complete this week. Well, all I need to do is drag and drop it and I can put it here within my in progress area. So now I can focus on this, this can be one of my top priorities for the coming week.

And if you want to minimize the details, I can simply do that as well. I can start to move things around if it comes to the review stage, or maybe I want to add it here as a part of my to-do list. And when I need to, I can simply expand it and see that template as a whole.

So a number of ways in which we can take action on the prompt results and not simply just let it sit within ChatGPT.

Must-read subject lines

Now, of course, once we have a fantastic email template, we want to make sure that people are going to open up that email. So the next one on our list is all about email subject lines, or you might want to consider titles for your content or social media posts.

So in this case, I'm going to ask it the following, write five email subject lines that are designed to increase open rates for an online store that sells scented candles. Remember, when it comes to your AI prompts, you want to be as descriptive and as detailed as possible. 

And instead of staring at a blank screen or a flashing cursor, I now have five excellent email subject lines that I can consider or start to edit myself. 

And again, since we are in Walling, if I want to stack-rank this, or maybe I just want to eliminate a few of these, maybe I don't like this first one here and I'm not wild about this one, I can check those off the list and I can rearrange these as well.

So once again, even if I am not happy with all of the results, I can become that much more actionable and start interacting with the results which the AI has given me. 

Build a task board

Now, so far in our video, we've seen how we can create small pieces of content, what Walling refers to as bricks, but we can actually go so much further by creating entire sections based on an AI prompt.

So instead of choosing to create a new brick with AI, this time I'm going to select to create AI for an entire section. And the keyword this time around has to do with creating a tasks list or a task board.

In this case, I'm going to give it the following prompt, create a task board for a successful retirement plan in your 20s. Perhaps I'm a financial advisor or I'm providing some financial coaching and I want to create a more actionable list for the clients that I work with. 

And rather than just spitting out a simplified bullet list or a number of paragraphs, look what Walling AI is capable of doing. Here I am presented with a task board with four different areas, financial assessment, savings goals, investment strategies, and skill enhancement, and then within each of those lists, I have actionable things that I could almost give to my clients right out of the box.

And yes, because this is a Kanban board style, if I need to move things around or reorder them, I can easily do it here, and again, not waste my time copying and pasting and trying to jam it into some other format. Let's let AI do the heavy lifting for us, not only with the answers, but by getting us that much further along the way.

Dynamic table data

Now, let's stick with creating a new section here within Walling. I'm going to select AI Generate again this time, but for this prompt, our keyword is the word table.

We just saw how we can create a board-style view, this time I'm going to say, create a budget table including the expense type, cost, quantity, and request date. And in almost no time at all, I am presented with an actual table, something where I can start to type in the cost of certain products or certain things that I have, maybe the quantity or how often we are going to be using that, and it even gives me a handy-dandy calendar here, so if I want to enter in the due date nice and quickly, I can do so. 

And because we're working with a table, we can also add other things, such as maybe we want to sum this entire column here, or maybe we want to sort this from ascending or by descending.

But once again, I'm not limited to just a good idea and then have to think about how I'm going to build this or enter this in manually in a spreadsheet or some other location, I can start to use and engage with this table right away and use less apps overall.

Design a complete project

Now, for our seventh and final prompt, I've perhaps saved the best for last. I've already shown you how we can create small pieces of information, but also create entire sections.

Well, what if you could create an entire project or entire plan right here from within Walling? Here on the left-hand side, I'm going to say, create a new wall, and I'm going to say AI Generate.

All we need to do is give it a specific prompt. In this case, I'm going to say, design and employee onboarding program for a health food store that includes training, job responsibilities, expectations, and closing duties.

I've only given it one detailed sentence, let's see what it comes up with. And in less than 10 seconds, I have a complete project plan with all of the information which I've requested. I've got a nice title here at the top.

It will even automatically include images related to whatever you are asking. So here's the Welcome section, describing a bit about our company culture and understanding our mission. 

Down below, here are the daily tasks and closing duties that I requested. Obviously, not everything is going to be perfect, but I can come in here and start to adjust the few things that need improving.

Down below, our store policies and culture and other areas, including checklists that people can use as a part of their training. It has even included a training schedule, which I can start to fill out so that that employee is set up for success.

Now, keep in mind, AI is never perfect. I'm not exactly sure why it shows the Amish building, a barn, but I'm going to come up here and select replace and maybe I'm going to type in the word fruit and immediately I'm brought up with a number of images.

That looks a lot more in line with a health food store, so I can quickly and easily make those modifications. So if you're wanting to take full advantage of AI, be sure to check out Walling. You can get started for free and receive 20 AI credits or get unlimited AI credits for a mere $6 per month.

Yes, that comes with unlimited guests per wall as well. 

And if you have any further questions about AI or getting the most out of your prompts, be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching.

And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Are you trying to highlight or find the most relevant information within your spreadsheet? Well, that's exactly where conditional formatting can help us out so much. So instead of staring at your spreadsheet aimlessly, let's take advantage of conditional formatting. 

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Getting started with Conditional Formatting

Here within Google Sheets, we need to come up to Format, and then near the bottom, we want to select Conditional Formatting. And on the right-hand side,we will have the opportunity to apply some conditional format rules.

Now, there are two choices, we can either choose a single color or a color scale, and I'm going to be covering both, including an advanced option that you may find helpful as well.

Single-color formatting‍

So the first thing we need to do is choose the range where we want this formatting to take place. Now, you can either type it in here if you're comfortable with that. I prefer to select the range with my cursor.

So in this example, I want to highlight things here within the Units column. So I'm going to select everything within that column and I'm going to say, OK. Now, by default, it is going to color everything in here because our default settings are if the format cells is not empty, we want to apply this color.

And because nothing is empty here, everything has a value, everything has received this green shade. But even this default can be handy at times. Let's say that I forgot to enter in a value here and let's say that this individual has forgotten to give me their sales numbers. 

Well, that stands out pretty clearly where I am missing data, so even this simple example may be helpful. But let's take a closer look at this drop-down menu so that we can make this conditional formatting that much more valuable.

In my example, I want to highlight anything here that is less than 30 units. Maybe if something has sold fewer than 30 units, that's a cause for concern and I would like to investigate further.

So I'm going to select this drop-down and you can see that there are three broad categories we can use. The first section is specific to text-based findings. So this would be very helpful if we were looking at one of these other columns, such as Region, Rep, or Item.

Next we have a date area, so if we want to zero in on a specific date or before or after, that would be most helpful here in my first column. 

But for my example, I want to look at units. I want to look at a numerical example, so I'm going to say less than or equal to. I'm going to select that option here, and then down below, all I need to do is enter in what that value is. S

o I said the number 30, I'm going to enter in the number 30, and instantly all of those cells that have 30 or fewer units are going to be highlighted here.

This makes it so much easier for me and others that I share this sheet with to find specific or important pieces of information. And remember, the conditional in conditional formatting means that it is dynamic.

So let's say that this unit is actually incorrect and they come back and say they actually sold 32. Well, as soon as I enter in the number 32, that color is going to be removed. 

But maybe this one is also incorrect, and we review on the order form that they only sold 29 units, well, now that will be shaded this color green. Speaking of color, we have a lot of options here when it comes to formatting that style.

Now, we have six different defaults ranging from green, yellow, and red. We can either choose to have a full color background like this, or if we want, we can just choose to have the text itself change color.

This may be a little too subtle, so I often prefer to use the full background here. But we're not limited just at those six selections, you can see down below we can add other options as well.

So if I want the numbers to be bolded in this case, I could do that. If I want them to be struck through, I could do that as well. Or if I want to change it to a custom color, I can make that option here as well. So you've got an awful lot of choice when it comes to choosing your color. 

Now, when you're happy with editing your conditional format rules, all you need to do is come down and select Done, and now those will be baked into your spreadsheet. At this stage, I can either close this window here or add another rule.

Now, if you ever need to go back and edit an existing conditional rule, all you need to do is select the cell which is being applied to that conditional rule.

You can see, even if I choose something else here within column E, even though it's not highlighted in red, this option here to edit or remove that conditional formatting rule is available to me.

So if I click on this, this menu will be revealed again. And maybe I want to change that number to anything less than 25 this time, and you can see at least one of those changed as a result. I'm now going to go ahead and hit Done. And if I want to remove it, all I need to do is select Remove This Rule and we were brought back to our standard spreadsheet.

Color scale formatting

But let's go ahead and add another conditional rule, this time we are going to make use of the color scale. So I'm going to select this tab here, the Color Scale, and once again, we will need to select the range where we want this rule to be applied.

In this example, I'm going to select everything here within this G column and select OK, and immediately you can see that we have a color scale applied. Now, in many cases, you may want to come up to this range and actually remove the end row and just leave it as the column name.

The reason being is so that as you add additional numbers down below, your same conditional formatting rule will apply.

f I left things at just G21 or G22, these rules would only be applied here. But I imagine I'm going to be adding further information in the future, so if I add in another dollar value here, I want the same color scale to be applied as well. 

So taking a closer look at our color scale, here you can see that the highest number here, roughly $2,800, has no color applied to it, and the darkest shades of green are going to be our lowest numbers.

However, I personally find this a little confusing. It's given a green shade, many of them very, very similar, to every single thing in this column and only one is standing out with no color at all.

Well, if we select the preview option here, we have a number of different color scales that we can choose from. Now, my personal preference is this red to white to green, and let me show you why. I'm going to select it here, and now we can see that the highest number within this column is that dark green. 

Some of our other higher numbers have a shade of green, but our lowest numbers are now in the red. To me, this color scale is a lot more helpful and makes a bigger distinction between the greatest totals and the lowest totals here as well. Now, down below the preview, we can continue to customize our rules for both the minimum point, the midpoint, and the maximum point as well.

But I find that this is going to be helpful enough for my needs right here. Keep in mind these color scales are not only dynamic, but the level of shading will change as well.

In this example, we can see that this is a dark green for the $2,875, the largest total in this column. But let's say we have a record sale and they actually sold 99 of these units. 

Now because this is such an extreme difference from everything else on the list, this is the only one with a green shade. We have a lot more white, meaning things that are more in the midpoint compared to this, and then the other shades that are red.

Maybe if this is a more reasonable number, something like 43, now we start to see some other green shades here, but if we change it to something like, oh, maybe three, now you can see what else jumps out as the highest point.

Again, we can see the effects of making these changes and how it will dynamically affect our conditional rule. When you're done or happy with your edits here, all you need to do is select the Done button.

Custom formula formatting

But now that you know how to apply a simple single or multi-color conditional formatting rule, let's take a look at how we can apply an advanced rule if we want to highlight multiple things and also highlight complete rows.

I'm going to select Add Another Rule and we're going to stay within the Single Color tab. This time, I'm actually going to select everything on my spreadsheet because I want to highlight entire rows.

Now, again, by default, because nothing is empty, it has actually made my entire spreadsheet green, but we're going to change that in just a moment. Here we're going to select what type of rule we want to apply, and I'm going to come all the way down to the bottom and select this custom formula option.

And here we have the opportunity to include a specific formula or a specific set of instructions. 

So I'm going to come in here and select the equal sign and then I'm going to select the dollar sign because I wanted to identify the entire row. And in my example, I'm going to say B, because we're going to be focusing on this B column.

In particular, I want to highlight all of the rows that were sold in the East region. So what I need to do next is enter in the number two, identifying that I want it to start looking at the top of this column and then continue to persistently look the remainder of this column.

I'm again going to enter the equal sign and I'm going to use quotes to look for the word East and then close it with my quotations once again. 

And now you can see not only has it highlighted the cells that contain the East region, but because we selected the entire range of this spreadsheet, it is highlighting the entire row as well, so I can really zero in on those areas.

I'm going to select Done, but we're not quite done because I also want to highlight the West region, but use as little effort as possible.

Now, to make it easier for me, what I'm going to do is actually copy this formula. I'm going to select Done and say Add Another Rule. Now, that entire range is already selected. That's great, I don't have to do that again. 

But once again, I want to come down to the custom formula. I'm going to paste in the same formula that we had before, but this time I'm going to type in the word West because that's what I want to highlight.

But I don't want East and West to have the same color, so I'm going to come down here and select this pinkish shade here. Now I can select Done and I can easily see the difference between everything that was sold in the East region versus everything else that was sold in the West region.

And remember, no matter how I sort my spreadsheet, these conditional formatting rules will still apply as long as they're within the range that we specify. 

So now that you know how to apply conditional formatting rules right here within Google Sheets, what further questions do you have? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Trello is a fantastic tool for managing so many different things, but Trello does not have a built-in form builder. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to create an amazing looking form that syncs directly to your Trello criteria. 

Benefits of forms with Trello

Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And here I have a sample Trello board called a Sales Pipeline, and my very first list is called New Requests.

But all of the cards that you see here, none of them were input by me, nor did I copy and paste anything. All of these have appeared via a form which I've made available.

And better yet, if I open up one of these, this label, this due date, the description here, and this email address all have come directly from that form.

So I now have all of this great form information that I can take action on and no longer do I need to receive this type of information in my email or go to some spreadsheet to find it later. So how did I set this up and how can you set it up in just a matter of minutes?

Using Jotform to build a form

Well, I'm using one of my favorite form builders, Jotform, to make it happen. And best of all, you can do this absolutely for free. Now, Jotform is a very powerful form builder, but it's also very easy to use.

So let's go ahead and create a form together and then show you how you can connect it directly to any Trello board. After signing into Jotform, I just need to select create a form. Now we have a few different options to get started.

We could begin with a blank form or we could import a form as well, but I'm going to choose the template option here. And what I'm actually going to be looking for is the form layout, because there's an awful lot of different layouts, but I especially like the card layout within Jotform.

And I'll show you in just a moment. I'm going to select this one. You can select preview on any one of these. But as you can see, as I hit start, you can see how sleek it's going to be.

As people are entering in information, they will immediately be brought to the next question so they can answer these things one at a time and not get lost with some kind of massive vertical scroll. So I'm going to come up here and say use template.

And remember, everything here is absolutely editable. So I'm going to come up here and I'm going to remove this image and I'm going to upload a file instead. And let's go ahead and select my logo. So now I've got my logo here.

Next, let's go ahead and change this text because this is just giving me a description. I can just say something like, "Please fill out this form for more detail," something along those lines. Now of course, we're going to come down and edit a few of the questions that we have listed down below.

Customizing form appearance

But just before we do so, why don't we make some changes to both the colors and of course, the background here? So I'm going to come up here to the right hand side and click on Form Designer.

Now there's a number of different themes in which we can choose from, but I'm going to select on custom. And yes, I want to remove that current image, and I'm going to select upload a file.

And I've got something here from my computer, which I think is going to make things stand out a lot better, really help people focus in on those questions. I like that a lot.

And then down below, we can also change other things, so for example, that button color, green is not really in line with my own button color. So I'm going to come up here and let's pick something more sort of in that purplish range.

This first option is just for the welcome. And then down below, this will change all the other buttons on the screen. And I think that makes it look a lot sharper, a lot more in line with my brand.

So now that I'm happy with the display, with the style, let's come down and start editing some of the questions. Now, anything here you simply just need to click on and you can either edit or remove it.

This first section here just gives me an opportunity to give some more detail. So I'm actually going to go ahead and hit remove. I want them to see that welcome screen here. And then I want to go directly into them entering information.

And down below, maybe I'm not interested in their phone number, so I'm going to delete that as well. But I am going to add some other fields.

Adding input fields

And here on the left hand side, I can hit plus. And this is really where Jotform stands out from other form builders, cause there are so many different options available to you, and we haven't even gotten to the payments and the widgets.

We're not going to use that in today's example. But in this case, I think what I'm really looking for is I want to include a dropdown. So I'm going to bring a dropdown here below the email.

And then I also want to give them the option to pick a date. So up here, I'm going to select the date picker, and I'm going to put that in here as well. So I've got a few simple questions, name, email, type a question, we're going to come back to that, a date, and then requesting information more.

So with these new fields that we've entered, I'm going to say, what are you interested in? What service are you interested in? So this is my opportunity to ask them a question and give them a few different options.

Now, if we jump back to our Trello board, you can see that I offer coaching, product launch help, and also auditing services. So all I need to do here within my Jotform form is give them those three options.

So if I do it in the same order, coaching, auditing, and the last one is product launch. I'm just going to save my changes here. And now when I set up the Trello integration, whatever they select when they fill out this form is going to appear in my Trello board.

Here's a date picker. I better give this a title. I'm going to ask them, when would you like to get started? That's going to be the question for this one here. And again, it's just a simple date picker for them.

And then lastly, in this description field, maybe I'll say something like, anything else you'd like to share? So if they'd like to ask a follow-up question or anything else, I've given them the opportunity here.

Connect Jotform to Trello

So we have our questions, we've got our form. The last thing that we need to do is now make the connection with our Trello board. And for that, we need to click here on settings.

Now under the settings menu on the left hand side, we want to come down here to integrations.

And here you can see the long list of many different kinds of integrations that are available to us. Now if you can't find the app that you're looking for, all you need to do is just come up here and do a quick search.

So yes, we are looking for our Trello integration. So I'm going to select that option here. And all you'll need to do is authenticate your Trello account so Jotform can send the information directly to it. And once you've given permission, you'll need to tell it if you want to create a card, which is what we want, or update an existing card.

We're going to select that first one here in terms of create a card. Next up, we need to pick the particular board. We're going to select that Sales Pipeline and then pick the particular list on that board.

And we want it to appear in that very first one, which is called new requests. Lastly, and this is probably the most important stage, is where we are going to match our fields.

So the things that we have asked for within our form, where do we want them to appear within our Trello board? Now, on the left hand side, this represents the name of the Trello card.

And here on the right hand side, we just need to tell it which of those fields, which of those questions do we want to appear. Now it makes the most sense, I think, to make it the name of the individual, right?

When I'm asking for their name, that's who I want it to appear on the front of the card. So I'm going to select name, but let's continue down and add a new field. So next up we want to take a look at, let's say the due date, right? So what's going to appear of the due date?

Well, obviously it's going to be when would you like to get started, right?

That's the option we want there. So when would you like to get started?

We want it to sync with that due date. Let's add another field. In this case, let's take a look at those labels, remember?

And that's where we want to pick the dropdown. What service are you interested in? So I'm going to select that. And then the last one, the one that we haven't picked yet is the email.

Now you'll notice that you are of course are limited to certain areas of Trello, and of course, you can never use the same one twice. So for the email address, I'm actually going to select the attachments area because it's going to create it as a link anyhow, which might be helpful.

So I can just click on it and immediately start to email them. And one more here actually that I forgot, we're going to put this in the description is the last question.

Anything else that you'd like to share? Now it doesn't matter what order you set this up in. You can see that this actually isn't the same order that I created the form. That makes no difference at all.

And if you want to remove any of them, you just need to come over here to the right hand side and select that X or make a change. But everything here looks great to me.

So I'm going to say complete the integration, and it says it's ready. I'm going to click finish here. And you can see there's this little check mark beside our Trello integration letting us know that this is active and that the integration is working.

The last thing we need to do is come over here to publish, and now we are ready to test things out.

Viewing the form in action So we can copy this link here.

We can put it anywhere that we want. I'm just going to select open in a new tab and look at how more inviting this form is than your standard Google Form or other forms that have a long vertical scroll bar.

So I'm going to say start. Let's go ahead and enter in some just test information here. I'm going to say Jane Doe and hit next. Then let's put in just a test email address and hit next. I love how the user can focus on just one question at a time.

And down below, it shows them how many different stages or how many different things they will be asked, and they can always go back if they need to go back. That's really slick too. I really like the way that, that looks.

It might even feel even better for those who are visiting your form on mobile. What service are you interested in? Well, let's say that I am interested in the auditing service. I'm going to choose that one here. I'm going to say next.

When would you like to get started? They can either enter in a date, but it's probably a lot easier just to pick the little calendar here. I want to get started by the 12th. I'm going to hit next. And anything else? I'm going to say no.

I look forward to working with you. Something along those lines.

We're going to put this in just so we can see what it looks like in Trello. I'm going to hit submit. And again, nice and clean and crisp. And if we go to our Trello board now, here at the very bottom, almost instantly is Jane Doe.

This is the form that we just filled in. And if I open it up, we've got all of those details. We've got auditing. That's what she said she was interested in. We've got the date, December 12th. Here is what she put at the very end.

No, I look forward to working with you. And here is her email address. So no longer do I need to wait for this information to hit my email inbox. No longer do I need to look at a spreadsheet or some other form and copy and paste this information.

I can now sort this. I can reach out to her and move her along within my Trello process.

It is slick, it is fast, and it can make your life so much easier. And if you're not already a Jotform user, you can get started with their free forever plan at Jotform.com, or click the link in the description down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Pipedrive continues to be one of my favorite CRMs because it's so simple and easy to get started.

I also really appreciate its simple navigation and how quickly and easy it is to find exactly what you're looking for, but Pipedrive also makes it very simple for us to set up automations. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to get started. 

So here within your Pipedrive account, to find the automations menu, we're going to come over here to the left-hand side, click on more, and then select automations.

And I'll admit at first glance, this screen may seem a little intimidating, but actually it's full of helpful suggestions. Here we're going to see a number of featured templates, including a number of template collections here at the bottom, but you may want to begin by browsing the different categories at the top of the screen.

Everything from emails, campaigns, and deal actions. But you can also look for automations that include some of your favorite software, including Teams, Asana and Trello. 

Now for our first example, I'm going to use a template because it can help us to create an automation in just a few minutes. I'm going to come down here and select this, Add New Deals template.

Every time a new person is added, create a deal. I want to try and remove the number of manual things that I need to do when someone is added and try to automate those things so I can focus on my most important work.

So I'm going to select this Add New Deal, and at first, it's going to give me a prompt asking me a couple of questions. Now, not all of them are going to be required. So for example here, the trigger condition is optional. 

I could choose if it's going to be a certain type of customer in which I want to create a deal, or I could just say any customer comes in and I want a deal created.

But in this case, I want to create something just for a hot lead, a customer, which I have identified as a hot lead. So I'm going to select that option here. And then under create deal, I get to choose a title.

Now, in my example, it's going to make the most sense if I give it the name of that individual. So I'm going to come down here and select person name, and then I need to tell it where do I want this deal to be created. And I'm going to select contact made.

At this point, I'm going to hit save. And now, my automation is almost complete. 

Here, I am brought to a workflow view so I can see the different steps, the different stages that are going to be taken.

Now I can click on any of these areas. So for example, if I want to change it from a hot lead, all I need to do is select edit, and I can change that condition here, but I'm happy with it the way it is. So I'm going to come up to the top and select Save.

Now in order to make sure that everything is working before we initiate this, by default, Pipedrive is going to make it inactive. Here you can see the toggle switch, but I'm going to turn it on and show you exactly how this works.

So back within my deal section, you can see that I only have one existing deal under this contact-made area. But let's jump into our contacts and I'm going to add a brand new person. I'm going to give it that specific lead. And then let's see what happens to that area. 

So here, I'm going to create a sample customer. I'm going to call him Teddy testerson, and I'm going to give him that label of a hot lead. Remember, that is what our automation trigger is looking for new persons With this particular label.

I'm going to hit save. And at the bottom of the screen, you can see that he has been added along with the appropriate label.

And now when we go back to our deal screen, there he is with the brand New Deal under Contact-Made, not only does this save me a lot of time and manual effort, but now that customer is exactly where I want them to be. 

But remember, you're not limited to just using the templates which are given here. You can start with your own automation from scratch. At the top of the automation screen, we can select add automation.

And here, we are brought directly into the workflow screen. So in this example, I want to create an automation that will send a welcome email when someone has actually become a customer.

And then I want to send them a follow-up email with some important instruction a few days later. So let me walk you through how easy it is to create this or any other automation from scratch. 

First off, you're going to want to come up here and give it a more appropriate title. By default, it's going to give it simply the date that you created this automation. So I'm going to call this an intro email to a new customer.

And remember, this is just for my reference. They will not see this as a part of the email. We can always come here and change this and add a helpful description if we'd like to. So my first step is to come over here to the right hand side and select my trigger.

I'm going to select person and then person updated. And then at the bottom, I select Apply Trigger. 

Next, I need to decide what exactly is that change or update that it needs to be looking for. And in this case, I'm going to select that label. On the right hand side, I'm going to say has changed to, and here, I want to say when it has changed to customer.

So that is going to be the condition that Pipedrive is looking for. I'm going to say apply those conditions, and that's exactly what has been added here as step number two. But we actually haven't told it what to do, what kind of activity or action to take.

All I need to do is select this plus button here, and now, I'm going to select my action. And in this case, I want to send an email. 

I'm going to come down here to email, and I can either create a new email from scratch or I can use one of my existing templates. I'm going to select the template option, select next. And now I can add all of the default fields that I want.

In this case, I'm only going to add one additional one, and that is track email opening. And on the next screen, I have two required selections. First, who am I sending this email to? Well, am I sending it to the owner or their primary email?

In many cases, this may be the same email address, but I'm going to select primary email. And then which template do I want to send? In this case, I want to send the intro template.

That's going to be the first email that they receive. And I'm going to select the person once again so that we can address them directly. 

This last option here is optional, but you may remember that I selected that. I wanted to choose if we are tracking those emails. So here, I can choose yes or no. I'm going to select yes and say apply the action.

So now when that customer label has changed, it will send this particular email template. But wait, remember I said I wanted to send another email with further instructions a few days later. Well, let's continue with our customized workflow.

I'm going to select this plus button here. And at the bottom, I want to select delay because I don't want this second email to be sent at the same time or immediately after. I'm going to select delay and I'm going to choose three days. 

I want to give them some time to read that welcome email, and then, they will receive further instruction.

So here, I'm going to say apply the delay of three days. I'm going to hit that plus button one more time and we're going to come back and select that action.

Again, we're going to follow many of the same steps we did before with our email template. I'm going to select next. I'm going to say the primary email and the template this time is the materials after contact.

And lastly, just choosing that person once again to address, I'm going to say apply that action, and now, we have our complete automation ready to go. When I'm happy with the layout, I can come up here and hit save. 

And remember, your last step before making this automation live is to come up here and to hit this toggle.

Now, I'm not going to hit this toggle just yet because I want to come back to my automations menu just to show you the difference between the one we just created, which is showing as inactive and the other two automations, including the one that we set up before, which is showing as active.

So here, you can quickly and easily edit any of your existing automations or simply disable an automation if you don't want to use it going forward.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Would you like to build great looking landing pages with no technical ability and do it absolutely for free? Well, in this video I'm going to show you how to build a landing page just like this with Google Sites. This video is sponsored by Pipedrive.

Pipedrive is the easy to use CRM that has one key purpose in mind to help you grow your business and get more sales. Click the link in the description below to try Pipedrive free for 30 days, plus get 20% off your first year.

Landing Pages

whether you're inviting someone to buy something from you or to opt into an email list or some other lead magnet. Landing pages are so crucial for every business, but that means we need to be able to create them in a matter of minutes, make sure that they load super fast, and hopefully do it at a reasonable price.

Well, the great thing about Google Sites is it allows us to do all three of those things. And what I mean by a reasonable price, I mean absolutely free. So here I am within my Google Sites account, and we are going to start with a blank screen.

Yes, there's a number of different templates that you could get started with, but I'm going to show you how easy it is to create a great landing page starting with a blank screen.

Landing Page Tutorial

So if we hit that little plus button here, we are going to be given a title screen. But the first thing that I want you to do is come up here over to themes. Now there's a few different themes for us to choose from.

I recommend that you start with impression because compared to some of the other themes, it's really going to make things jump out and stand out. And let's start right there with our headline.

The headline might be the most important thing as a part of your landing page. So in this example, I'm going to be promoting a webinar. So I want to give it something catchy and punchy upfront.

So my headline's going to read, "The one webinar you don't want to miss", but I don't like the layout. I don't like the text covering three different lines. Well, no problem. All we need to do is just simply drag it to a position that we prefer. 

And now that's much easier to read and remember, Google sites, of course, is responsive, so this is still going to look great even on a small mobile device such as our phone.

Now this red shade here is completely customizable, but let's come back to that in just a moment.

Next, we want to add two very important parts to any landing page. One is an image and two is a subheader, along with a brief description as to what it is we are offering or why someone should click that sign up button, that buy now button, whatever it is that you are offering.

Now, we could do this one at a time by clicking text box and images, but I think it's much easier and also much faster if we make use of content blocks. 

So I'm going to select content block, and immediately it's going to bring it below my header, below my banner image here.

So I can click on this plus button over the image. I'm going to select upload, and I'm going to select the image that I want. Now it's going to try and fit the placeholder that was already there, but no problem.

We can adjust, we can crop, we can edit this image the way that we want. In my example, all I need to do is stretch the lower part of my image just like this. And now my image is fitted perfectly.

Now on the right hand side of the screen is where I can add my sub headline along with some key bullet points. Now, after entering in the information that I want, I'm not very pleased with the size or the layout. 

Remember, it's using this theme along with its fonts and its sizing. But don't forget, everything here is customizable. So maybe this subheader, I don't want to be the title. I'm going to come down here and select subheading.

So now it's not only a lot smaller, but it seems to fit with a better subheading right here as well. I want to make it a little bit bolder though. And maybe let's bump up the size of this. Yes, that looks a lot better for my needs.

And then down below, I also want to punch up this, "You will learn", I'm going to make that a little bolder and punch that up to font size 14. So now I've got something that looks and feels a little bit cleaner.

So now we have something that seems to fit the style and the overall feel of this page. Now of course, the fourth component might be the most important on any landing page, and that is the call to action. 

Typically, we want to include that in the form of a button, which is going to take them someplace else. Or maybe you want to embed something on this screen such as the sign up to your email list.

In this case, we're going to come back up to insert, and if we scroll down, we have all of these other options and features which we can include. I'm going to select the button option, and I'm going to say, sign me up now.

And then down below, all I need to do is add the link to where people will go when clicking that button. Now, just as with other components of our landing page, we can make edits to that button as well.

If we don't want it to span the full width, we could just make it a standard button size. If we don't want it to be filled and maybe we just want it to be outlined, we can make those changes as well. 

Personally, I find that the filled option and the full option is the most impactful, but will also look the best on various screen sizes.

Now we're almost ready to preview our page and see how it will look, but there's one last component that I would encourage you to include, and that is some social proof, here down below, it looks like a great space where I could put some reviews or maybe some things that people have said on my social media accounts just to encourage them to sign up for this particular webinar.

So once again, we're going to come up to insert, but this time we are going to select images and I'm going to select upload. And I'm going to go and grab this piece of social proof. And for this tutorial, I'm simply going to duplicate it two more times and then I'm going to drag it over here.

Of course, you wouldn't put the same testimonial three straight times. This is just a placeholder for today's demo. 

Now the last thing that you may want to do is either change the color of this page and also enter the name of your business or your website. Sometimes it can be very comforting to let people know that they've landed on something that is specific to your business or your brand.

So up here in the corner, maybe I'm going to type in something like Simple Solutions, or alternatively, I could also add a logo. And then if we're not wild about this red color here, we can go back to our themes.

And here in the lower right hand corner, we can choose one of the default colors below. See how that changes the look and feel of the screen. Or we can come here and enter in our custom hex code.

And don't forget, other elements here are editable as well. If you want to change the image here for the header, you could upload your own or simply give it a solid color. 

But when you're ready to preview, all you need to do is come up here to the top of the screen, select this little laptop mobile icon, and it will give you a full preview of what your landing page will look at, including the button that we've created down below.

And if you want to see what it will look like on a mobile device, you can preview it here as well. When you're all done and ready to publish, come up here and select that publish button.

The only thing left to do is to add a web address. So in this case, I'm going to save seven free web apps, and it looks like that is available.

I'm going to select Publish, and now I can go ahead and share this link with whomever I want, put it wherever I want, link it to wherever I want, and they will come to my custom landing page.

So the next time you want to create a great looking landing page and do it for free, make sure to do it right here within Google Sites. 

Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Linktree is the easy and free way to create a micro page. So, you can share all of your most important links, whether that's your website, a checkout page, or maybe a link to book a call with you, you can do it all with Linktree.

So, in this video, I'm going to show you a complete tutorial on how to get started and set up your Linktree page, so you can get more clicks and get people to where you want them to go. 

This video is sponsored by Neo, the new email and growth suite for small businesses that gives you an email address with your own domain name and is full of features that help your business grow.

Neo is fantastic because it lets you track when someone opens an email you've sent, schedule appointments with clients and prospects, send marketing mailers, and create a simple website that you can launch in minutes. Try Neo for free today by using the link in the description below.

Choose a username

So, to get started with Linktree, all we need to do is select sign up for free.

And the great thing is, is that we can get so much out of Linktree without having to upgrade, or use their paid service.

But we'll go over some of those differences a little later.

So, I'm going to choose to sign up with my Google account. You can choose to do so, or you can just use an email and password if you like. Now, the very first thing that you're going to need to decide is maybe also one of the most important, and that is choosing a username.

This is going to be the end of your Linktree link. 

This is what others are both going to see and click on, whether you put this in an email, in your social media bio, if you put it really anywhere online, maybe send it via text message. So, you want to be careful in selecting a username.

Now, of course, it has to be unique. So maybe I want linktree/simple, that is already taken. Maybe I would like simple Scott.

The good news is that that is available. So, that's what I'm going to use for my example. But take your time here and select something that is rather short, the shorter the better.

If you can use your actual business name, or the handle that you use somewhere else, all the better, but take your time with this first step.  We are going to select continue at this stage.

Choose a plan

And now Linktree wants to know a little bit about ourselves just so they can personalize the experience. So, let's go ahead and we're going to tell them our name. And since I'm using a business example here, I'm going to say that the company name is Simple Solutions.

I'm going to select continue, and I'm using it for business purposes. You don't have to make as many selections here. In fact, I'm going to leave everything else down below here as optional and hit continue.

We can always change these settings and customize it for our needs later. 

Now, next up, Linktree is going to ask you which plan you would like to subscribe to. By default, they are going to select the pro plan. But when you're just getting started, I recommend that you start with the free plan.

In fact, for many of you, the free plan may be all that you need because you can add as many links, and linked apps within a free account. Yes, you won't be able to see the analytical data as you would in other paid plans, but for many of you, that may not be necessary.

So, let's continue with that free option. I'm going to come down here and say, join for free.

Style your page

Next up, Linktree is going to ask us how we want to stylize our page. And this is very important so we can match our own branding, or give something that looks a little unique.

When someone lands on our Linktree page, we want it to look inviting. We also want it to match our logo, for example, or maybe our profile picture, so they know it is one of our links and that they can proceed with clicking on one of the options down below.

So, they give us a few defaults here which are really not worth your time. So, immediately I would encourage you to select to add a profile image. I'm going to upload my logo, so that it's front and center that they can see it here when they land on this screen. 

If you don't have a logo, or if you are using this for personal use, you may want to upload your headshot, preferably something that people are used to seeing in other places.

So, if you are putting this within your X bio or LinkedIn bio, Instagram bio, for example, when they come here, you want to give them the confidence that they know it's the same person, or the same business, or organization.

Now, down below, we have the choice of choosing a different background theme.

And there's a few different combinations here if you like more of a darker background,a lighter background, this one might work well for me because blue is my color.

So maybe I'm going to select this one, but don't worry, all of this is editable a little later on.

Linktree interface

Now, after we are happy with the style that we've selected, we are brought into the Linktree interface.

So, this is where we have a few different menus here at the top, including links, probably the most important, appearance, where we can go back and change some of the settings that we just set, analytics, which for the most part are only going to be available to those on the paid version. We have limited analytics here within the free account and some other settings as well.

Now, just before we jump to the links, we may want to start with some of our social media icons, because one of the main purposes of using Linktree links is, so that you can showcase other options, other pages, other places in which people can connect with you online. 

So, what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to go ahead and add a few different icons. Maybe for example, I want to add my Instagram link. 

So, all I need to do in this case is just add my Instagram handle.

I don't actually have to go ahead and copy and paste that link. I'm just going to say, add to Linktree. So, here I've got that icon and you can see here on the right-hand side, we have a preview of what it will look like.

So, if people click on that Instagram icon, they will be taken directly to my Instagram page. Let's go ahead and add one more icon. And in this case, maybe I want to add my email address if I want them to reach out to me directly. 

So, all I need to do here is type in my email address. I'm going to use this fake address in this particular example, and once again here you can see I have this email icon, which will be displayed here.

Now once we start adding links we may want to decide if we want these icons near the top of the screen, or if we want to push them down to the bottom. And you have that option here in terms of the position.

It doesn't look like it's at the bottom, but what it means is that our links are going to be displayed here in between our Linktree address, or our Linktree handle and the icons that we add here.

Adding links

So, with that, let's get to the meat and potatoes of Linktree, and is adding our links. Now, you'll see that Linktree tries to help us out by giving us a bit of a checklist. The first step here is to add three links.

Now, technically you don't have to add three links, but if you're adding less than three links, Linktree is perhaps not the service meant for you.

The whole purpose of Linktree is for you to share a single link, something that is short and clean, again, in a variety of different places, and then give them the ability to access other things.

Four, five, could be as many as 10 different links on that screen, things that might be more relevant to them. 

So here, all we need to do is select add a link and we can really choose anything that we want. Now, the easiest way to do this is to simply copy and paste the URL of any of the pages that you would like to add.

So, to get started, I'm going to begin with my website.

So, all I need to do is paste or enter in my website address and select add. And it's going to add that link here on the right-hand side. Now, it's automatically pulled over some information, including the tagline to my website.

And in this case, that's not what I want to see. Number one, it doesn't look like it's a website and it's not really enticing people to go and click on this. No worries, we can change and edit that here on the left-hand side. 

So instead of having this tagline, maybe I'm going to put something as simple as website. They're already on my Simple Scott, or my Simpletivity Linktree page. So, I don't need to say simpletivity.com.

I can be a lot more direct and say, this is the website. Or I could say something like, click here to learn more. Whatever I want to say, I can add that here and it will appear within my Linktree page.

Now, you'll notice that there's a number of different options that we have down below here, including the ability to toggle this on or off. But let's go ahead and add two more links, so that we have a few more to play with, and then I'll show you how you can optimize these other options.

So, I'm going to add another link here. I'm going to go and copy and paste my YouTube channel in this case, and I'm going to select add, and let's add a third one here. 

Maybe I want to invite people to subscribe to my newsletter. So, you'll see now that we still want to go back in and edit some of these.

YouTube.com doesn't sound very enticing, so I'm going to come here and edit this, and maybe I'm going to use the proper capitalization, and say YouTube channel, so they know exactly what they're getting at.

Now with my last entry here to subscribe to the newsletter, you'll see that it pulled in part of an image from that landing page. If I actually go to the landing page, it has tried to pull over this image, but because it's so rectangular, we're only seeing a small portion of it.

So again, not very inviting, not very pleasing, but the good news is, is that we can edit or add additional icons to make these buttons stand out that much more, make them that much more inviting for people to click on. 

So, what I'm going to do in this case is I'm going to come up to this subscribe to newsletter, and I'm going to select the thumbnail option here, and I'm going to say change. Now, we have two choices here.

We can either go to our computer and upload our own thumbnail, or we can drag something in from maybe one of our other social media profiles, or we can choose an icon which has already been created here.

This is called choose from tabular icon. So, we can choose from a library. So, in this case, since it's a newsletter and it's a productivity newsletter, I'm going to see if they've got something related to a check mark and they do.

I'm going to go with this circular one here. So, now I've got a nice clean circle check mark beside it here. Next down for the YouTube channel. 

Once again, I'm going to say set that thumbnail and I could upload my own here if I wanted to. But once again, let's see what they have for YouTube. They do have a YouTube one, so I can continue with that nice clean theme.

And lastly, let's do the same here for our website. I'm going to select change and let's see what do they have for something like a website? Well, I guess this is very close to a website.

I don't know if it's the most enticing, but at least it is directly associated with where they are going, or what they will expect to see. So, you can really customize both the labels, and the images for each and every one of your links.

Now, two other things we want to keep in mind as we continue to add and edit our links here within our Linktree page. Number one, pay attention to how you want to order your links. Here on the left-hand side, we can simply click and drag, so we can reorder our links here. 

Maybe I want them to go to my YouTube channel first and the website is not as important, but you'll also notice here on the right-hand side, we have the option to toggle links on or off.

So, you might want to go ahead and add a large number of links, everything related to your website, all of your social media platforms, your email address, your lead magnets, your shopping carts, your booking pages, just have it all ready to go.

But then you can choose to toggle things on or off. So, maybe if I don't want them to come to my YouTube channel since most of them are finding me there, I can simply toggle it off. It will be removed from my Linktree page, but I haven't lost any of my setup.

I haven't lost the URL or the image that I chose. Later on, if I want to enable it, I simply need to come back in here, select that toggle, and now it is back and will appear on my screen.

Adding a header

Now, just before I go and start sharing this link with others, I want to pay your attention to something that is almost hidden here, and that is the ability to add a header.

So, by default, people are going to see your selected profile image, your name, remember, this is the name of your link, so in my case, it is Simple Scott, and then your links down below, in addition to any other icons that you may choose to add.

But sometimes it can be helpful to add a short bio, or a short description at the beginning of your Linktree page. And to do that, we want to select add a header. So, here we have the option to add a headline tag, or title.

Now you are limited to only 35 characters, so you need to be able to make this very, very short. I might say something like, get more done and enjoy less stress. 

So, they know again, that it's something similar, it's something that falls in line with the rest of my branding. Or you could change it to something like, click below for more info, or get your free resources below.

And you can have a link to the different lead magnets or the different free guides that you may offer. So, this header section can be very valuable. Even though you're limited to just a few characters, it can tell them just a little bit more about their expectations, or what you want them to do next.

Now that we've set up our style, we've added some links and added a brief description, you're ready to start sharing this with others. And all I need to do is select copy URL and I can paste it where I like. 

Now here on the desktop, this is what users will see when they click this link.

They have access to the three links in addition to the icons that I have listed down below. Now, of course, Linktree is really maximized for mobile use because we want to share a lot of valuable information in a relatively small amount of real estate.

So, this is going to look even better, be that much more helpful for users who click on this on your Instagram profile, on your X-bio, on your LinkedIn description, really wherever you include that link. But now they are just one click away from a resource, or a page that you want to send them to. 

So, now that you know how to get started with Linktree, I would love to hear from you next. What other questions do you have, and where do you plan to include your Linktree link? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Every single month, I need to create the exact same meeting. But we never meet on the exact same date. It's going to have the same title, the same meeting location, the same description and details, and even the same guests here.

So how can I make this easier on myself? Well, what if I just use a simple keyboard shortcut like this? And in just one second, absolutely everything is filled in the way that I want: the name, the location, the details, including important links, and everyone that I want to add to this meeting.

So how did I do this and how can you do this in so many other applications? Let me show you how.

For years, I've been recommending that you make use of text expansion tools so that you can not only save a whole lot of time but you can also cut down on errors and mistakes.

So for example, if I ever need to include my meeting details, all I need to do is hit two keys on my keyboard and I can insert my Zoom meeting wherever I want. Maybe there is a standard reply that I use for my consulting clients.

Oh, no problem here. If I even want to address them by their proper name, I can insert that into an email, into a form, or really anywhere that I want on the web.

Now, in today's example, I am using Text Blaze, a free browser extension which allows you to create snippets so you can quickly and easily input the information that you want and then create your own custom shortcut key.

So let's return to my initial example where I had so many different things going on and filled in in just a split second, all with the use of a keyboard snippet. So let me show you exactly what is going on and how you can build the same thing. 

So to get started in my example, all I need to do is open up a new blank calendar event.

This is so we can tell Text Blaze exactly where we want to put certain pieces of information. I'm going to go back to my Text Blaze dashboard and I'm going to come up here and select create a new snippet.

And at the bottom of my list here, you can see that that new snippet is displayed. Now, the nice thing is that Text Blaze does allow us to organize our snippets into multiple folders so we don't necessarily have to have just a long list here.

Now, our first step is to give that snippet a name. And in this case, I'm going to call this one a calendar event. Now, the label just describes your snippet and is really only for your purposes.

The more important thing you want to think about is what is the shortcut key going to be? Now, you can really create any combination of characters or letters. But in my case, I've decided to use a forward slash in front of all of my snippets.

Now that we have a label and a shortcut, next we just need to tell it what we want it to do. 

Now, in this case, if we go back to our calendar, when we first open up an event, the cursor is already going to be placed here. So the very first thing I need to do is give it a meeting name. So I'm going to call this one Meeting with Tim.

Let's say that Tim and I need to meet once a month but not on the exact same date or week of the month. So that's going to be the name that I give the event. Next, I want to come over here to the right-hand side and tell it where to put the cursor next.

And for that we're going to be using the click element. Now, Text Blaze has a number of different elements that we can choose from here, including adding advanced calculations, inserting tables, and even simulating keyboard presses, which we're going to get to in a moment.

So here I'm going to select click element, and you can see that it has added it here within my snippet. With the click element inserted into my snippet, I'm going to select from website, and it's going to instruct me to open up the other tab, or a new tab if I'm starting from scratch, and tell it where I want it to click. 

So going back to my Google Calendar, you will notice two things.

Number one, you will notice that wherever I place my cursor, you are going to see a highlight of yellow. This is so we can zero in exactly where we want that cursor to go next.

The second thing you will notice is that we are given a bit of an instruction here at the bottom of the screen, telling us to select that particular target. So I'm going to come up here to location, I'm going to select it, and here I can confirm by saying insert it into the snippet.

Now, don't worry if you've selected wrong or incorrectly. You can continue to select a different space on the screen. But let's go back and select that location and say insert into snippet. Now, it has taken that piece of information.

That's where the cursor will go next. So in terms of a location, I'm going to say that this is a phone call and maybe I want to include my phone number so that they have it at the ready. 

Next up we're going to come back to our click element. I'm going to say select from website. Let's go back. And this time, let's go to our description. And I'm going to say insert into snippet.

And here is where we can include our meeting details. In my example, maybe I want to remind them to review the budget numbers before this call. Next up, we're going to return to that click element. Yes, you get the picture.

Select from website. We're going to come back here and I'm going to move over to the Guests area and say insert into snippet. And here I can add as many different email addresses as I like. For our example, I'm just going to insert the one.

And this time I'm going to actually add a simulated keyboard press because as you may know, when you start to enter in email addresses here, you do need to hit enter on your keyboard in order to actually add them to the invitation.

So coming back to Text Blaze after entering in my email addresses, and I could separate these with commas if I wanted to add more, I'm going to say key press. So I'm going to select select the Enter key. And now it's going to simulate selecting Enter on my keyboard. 

Now, best of all, when using Text Blaze, we don't have to wait to finish our entire snippet here before we can go and test it out. So let's return to our calendar event. Let's place the cursor at the top where it would be anyhow when we first open up this event.

And I'm going to select forward slash C-R snippet trigger. And here in just a split second, it's added everything that we've wanted exactly where needed: the name, the location, along with the phone number.

We have the description. And yes, Jane has been added as well. But why don't we just add a few more details so we can make this even faster? For example, we can tell Text Blaze to hit the save button once we've added these details here.

And as you may know, if you're a Google Calendar user, we are going to be prompted to send out invitations to those users. Well, we can add that functionality to our snippet as well. Going back to Text Blaze after the Enter key, let's come back to the click element.

And this time we're going to come up here and select that save button. We're going to say insert into snippet. Perfect. 

So now that I've proceeded with hitting the save button, here is the prompt. And we also want to tell Text Blaze to select send at this point. So I'm going to come over here. And once again, we're going to select the click element, select from website.

And this time we are going to select that send button. I'm going to select insert to snippet. And now I think we are done. So let's return to our Google Calendar main page. I'm going to select the time where I want this meeting to happen.

All I need to do is select forward slash C on my keyboard. And now I'm instantly returned back to my calendar with that event created and with all of the details that we wanted.

So think of the number of places, the number of forms, the number of things that you do on a regular basis where this could not only save you so much time but will ensure that you get the correct details.

Next, let's take a look at an example where we are wanting to collect information from a certain website because rather than just inserting the same information within a form, this time we are going to be pulling or scraping information from a particular website. 

In this example, I'm wanting to create a list of different softwares, along with their G2 scores, how many reviewers gave that score, and what is the top industry within those areas. Now, all of this information is going to be coming from the G2 website.

And this would take an awful lot of time for me to do manually, to come into each and every product, to scroll down, to copy and paste the name or type it in manually.

I would have to hover over this just to get the specific score and then I'd have to scroll down and find out what the top industry is represented here. Well, what if I could just come back to my spreadsheet and just enter in forward slash G2 and I've got all of that information inserted in just a second.

What if I came back to G2 and say that I wanted to, oh, I don't know, maybe get the same information from Asana.

As soon as I have Asana pulled up, I'm going to use the exact same snippet and now I've got that information input as well. So let's return to our Text Blaze account. And let me show you how to set up this type of snippet. 

Now, remember, we are not actually doing anything in particular with Google Sheets. In fact, we could use this snippet within any other application. What we are doing is telling it where to pull that information from.

So here we're going to be using the insert website information element. By selecting this, I'm going to come down. And we have a number of different options to choose from. But in our example, we're going to say website contents text.

I'm going to select that and we are presented with a very familiar select from website button, where we now go to that particular website. And just like we saw before, you will see that highlight of yellow.

Well, first things first, I want the name of the product. So I'm going to select that and say insert into snippet. Because I intend to put this into a spreadsheet, I want to use the key press element next and select the Tab key.

Remember, that's going to push the cell over to the right so we are ready to insert that next piece of information. Back in Text Blaze, what we are going to do is again select website and then website contents text. And we are returned to our screen. 

This time I'm going to scroll down a bit further and I'm going to select the 4.3 and then insert to snippet. Once again, we'll want to simulate a Tab key so it pushes it over into the next field. And next I'm going to select insert website.

And for this I'm going to return to the top of the screen and I'm going to select this review option here and select insert into snippet. We will hit that simulated Tab key press once again.

And then the last one we are going to choose from, website contents text, we will be returned to our tab. And here I want to select that top industry. So I'm going to select this area here and then insert into snippet.

And now we should be ready to go. So now if I return to my spreadsheet, all I need to do is select forward slash S and that information is automatically put into my spreadsheet. And don't forget, when you're here within your Text Blaze editor, you can click and drag these elements around as well.

So if you do put things in an incorrect order or perhaps you need to add an extra click element or a simulated key press, you can always do so without starting from scratch.

So now that you've seen the amazing ways in which Text Blaze can save you time, what kind of snippets will you create next? Be sure to let me know and share with others in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Oh no! I'm running late for this meeting and I really want to let the other five participants know that I'm going to arrive late.

But what do I do? Do I pick up my phone and try to send off a text or an email? Do I open up my email client here on my browser? Do I click on the event, hit this email tab and I'm still going to have to write out a message?

What if I could do all of this with just a single click? Well, I've discovered a faster way to do this and so many other tasks with a free extension. For example, all I need to do is select alt+B on my computer and I'm going to select hit Send.

This is going to send a message to the participants of my next meeting, letting them know that I'm running a few minutes late. So what is this cool free extension and how do you use it to save time? Let me show you.

So in my first example, I used a shortcut key on my keyboard to bring up this dialogue. This is Bardeen, a free browser extension which you can use to connect a number of different applications, but more importantly, execute very specific actions.

And no, you don't have to create your own from scratch. It comes with an extensive library of pre-built actions with some of your favorite tools whether it is Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, maybe it's a project management tool like ClickUp, Asana or Trello.

And of course, things like ChatGPT is built right in. So here within my Bardeen dialogue, I have a number of different playbooks which I have created or saved to my account. Now, a playbook within Bardeen is something that you initiate.

So as you saw in my example, I hit send to send an email to all the participants of the next meeting about running late. That's right. You saw that. I didn't even have to select the specific meeting.

It was just going to automatically look at the next upcoming meeting and send an automated message. These are things that I am going to trigger on my own but Bardeen also has autobooks where you can set up schedules if you want certain things to execute on a recurring basis or a recurring time.

So for example, here I have an auto book, which is going to text message me all of my week's meetings on Monday morning, giving me a summary of all of those meetings in advance. And of course, I can edit this to my liking.

Maybe I'd like to receive this every morning. Maybe I'd like to receive it on Sunday. Maybe I only want to receive the next three days meetings. Whatever I like, I can set it up here.

But before we dive into the details, let's take a closer look at some of our options here within Bardeen. Now, one of the easiest ways to access Bardeen is by selecting alt+B on your keyboard, an easy keyboard shortcut which will bring up your dialogue.

But of course you can also click on it here within your extensions, within your browser. And if you don't like this compact view, no problem. We can expand things out so we can see things in more detail.

At the top of the screen, there are three main sections: playbooks, autobooks and the last one is a scraper. Now, if you're not familiar with that term, scraping means when we are taking information from a particular website.

So if you're wanting to collect the contact details or the work history of a number of LinkedIn profiles for example, and then put that into a spreadsheet, this would be an example of how you could use that tool.

You can also use scraping functionality within our autobooks and our playbooks as well. But let's get started with the basics with our playbooks.

Now, while I've already created a number of playbooks here, you're probably going to want to get started with the explore button where they've categorized a number of different actions based on theme such as product development, personal productivity, or meetings or it has also broken it down by various apps.

And here's a little bit of Bardeen magic. If you don't see what you are looking for, don't waste your time browsing through the library. You can just come up here and tell Bardeen exactly what you're looking for and it will build it for you.

So in this example, I'm going to say create a Zoom link for my next calendar event and then add it to the description. So that's fairly detailed. It doesn't have something in the library. I'm going to let the Bardeen AI assistant build it for me.

It's going to analyze what I just wrote and then look at this. It has created this playbook just for me.

That's right. Building your own custom automation can be as simple as texting a friend, but you know what's even better is that Bardeen is smart enough to give you suggestions based on the website or the application that you're currently in.

Here I am within a Google sheet, and if I pull up Bardeen and go to the explore tab, you can see that it's going to give me a number of suggestions specific to Google Sheets.

Maybe I want to get a list of competitors and summaries and SEO keywords from a list of URLs in Google Sheets. And remember, while these are all prebuilt options you can edit any of them or if you choose, you can start from scratch.

So regardless of the different or multiple applications that you have involved and the types of actions that you want to perform, you'll be able to do so right here within Bardeen.

Let's take a quick look at one that I modified not too long ago so I can get valuable feedback from my YouTube videos. So let me set the scene. Here, I am looking at one of my YouTube videos and I noticed that there's 87 comments.

That's an awful lot of comments to go through and there's probably been a lot of new comments added since I published this video two months ago. Well, to make my life that much easier I'm going to use this particular action, this particular playbook, so I can get a summary of all of those comments and see are they negative, are they positive, are they neutral and what other valuable data can I get from this video.

So I'm going to select this and immediately it's going to crawl or scrape through all of those comments on this screen. Now again, you can adjust this to your liking. In this case, I've told it to limit it to just the last 50 comments but I could choose a much larger number if I want to.

This would probably take me roughly 20, maybe 30 minutes for me to go through every single comment, read it and decide what is best. But here it has only taken less than 30 seconds. And now I have a spreadsheet with all of this information, including the sentiment.

So if I sort this from A to Z, I can see that there's a couple of mixed comments. There's a large number of neutral comments and there are quite a few positive comments as well.

And I'm quite pleased that it has not identified any specific negative comments but there's other valuable pieces of information here too. So for example, which of these comments received the most likes? Well, I can sort from that.

I can see when exactly it was published. I can do so much more here. And it took me only a few seconds to pull that information and put it into a Google sheet. So think about other things that you need to accomplish as a part of your work or as a part of your business.

What currently takes you 5, 10, 20 minutes to accomplish that you could set up in Bardeen and accomplish in only a few seconds? Now, I know you may be thinking that editing and action or creating your own maybe difficult but Bardeen keeps it very, very visual so you can understand completely what is going on.

Going back to our first example here, I'm going to say open in builder, and we can visually see what is happening when it's sent that reminder. The first step was to find the next event, then find the email addresses of those participants and then send that email.

And remember, everything here is editable. So if I come here and select the subject, I can change that subject, I can add and copy other people on that email. I can edit this to my heart's content.

And if after sending the email I want to add another action, all I need to do is hit this plus button here so you can tweak or adjust your playbooks or your autobooks as much as you like.

So if you'd like to start adding simple automation that will save you a whole lot of time, be sure to install the Bardeen extension. To do so, just go to Bardeen.ai or click the link in the description down below.

And if you have some favorite automation tips that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear from you. Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

When you look at the very top of your web browser, does it often look a little like this, a mess of different tabs, which can often be confusing and waste a lot of your time as you're trying to find that website or that application that you need right now?

Well, what if instead, you could simply drag your cursor to the left of the screen and have access to all of your favorite productivity apps, including access to all of those tabs, but in a much easier manner? Well, in this video, I'm going to show you a free Chrome extension that does all of this and so much more.

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

And it's a fact that most of us spend much of our day here within our browser, going between apps and websites and other tools that we need to get things done but we can often waste an awful lot of time by trying to find that particular tab or that particular app that we are looking for.

Instead, wouldn't it be easier.if we just had one-click access to everything that we need here on the left-hand side? Well, with the Manganum Chrome extension, we can do just that.

Not only can we access all of our open tabs, our recently closed tabs, and our full history, but we can create a custom space just for us so we can have our most-visited tabs, our favorites, and, yes, our bookmarks, so if we'd like to gain even more viewing room, we could get rid of the bookmarks bar here and access them here on the left-hand side, but it's so much more than just a tab or bookmark manager.

We also have direct access to our calendar, our tasks, our notes, and even our text messages. So let's take a look at these features and see how they can help you to be more productive. Now, if you're already a Google Workspace user, you're probably familiar with the Google side panel.

So here when I'm within my Gmail account, I can also access my calendar on the right-hand side. I can also access things like my notes and my tasks. But you know what? I only spend a small portion of my day within Gmail or within a Google app.

I'm spending so much more time in other tools that help me get things done, and I don't have that side panel available. But with the Mangano extension, we always have access to our calendar, our notes, and our tasks here on the left-hand side, so I can see, at a glance, what is coming up in my day.

I can also choose to be notified when a meeting is upcoming. So for example, here you can see there's a little one-hour indicator, meaning that my next meeting is happening in about an hour, giving me a subtle hint that perhaps I need to prepare and make sure that I don't miss that call.

But you're probably saying, "What if I want access "to all of these things at all times, "and I don't want to just reveal it "by dragging my mouse to the left-hand side?" Well, good news because with Manganum, we can do just that.

Here in the top right-hand corner of our Chrome browser, we can choose to show the side panel, and now we have access to all of Manganum's features at the click of a button, and no, they won't go away when we switch tabs or if we're doing something on the active screen.

Here, I have access to all of my Google tasks, so no matter what I'm doing on the active screen, I can check things off here on the right-hand side, or in the moment, I can quickly add a task as well, all without never having to leave the page that I'm on.

And perhaps I'm referencing something here as I'm adding that task. But what if you don't use Google Tasks and you use another popular app such as Todoist or TickTick? Well, good news, if we come up here to the dropdown, you can see that you can integrate Manganum with both of those apps as well.

So regardless of your to-do list preference, you can have access to all of those tasks here on the right-hand side. Next up, we have access to Google Keep, which, again, is great because I'm usually taking my notes  outside of a Google application.

Not only can I reference all of my existing notes, but at the top of the screen, I can easily take a new note and copy and paste and bring in data from the screen at hand.

But one of the newest additions to the Manganum extension also might be one of the most helpful, especially if you're a Google Drive user.

Here I am within my Google Drive account, and yes, I have access to some other apps on the side panel, but what I always find frustrating with Google Drive is if I come here and want to open up this file, it's going to open it up in a new tab, and then I have to go back to the original tab, and I'm going to open up this file.

Okay, now I've got two drive files open, but I also have the drive screen open as well. Before I know it, I have seven new tabs available to me, and I'm not interested in many of them.

But here within Manganum, if we click on the Drive tab, not only do I have the ability to search for any of my Drive files, but when I click on one of these files, it opens it up in the exact same tab so I can quickly go between these different files

without adding any new tabs, without adding any extra baggage to my browser.

I can go back and forth between the files that I need to or I can view my file structure here from the side panel as well. Now, at this point, some of you might be saying,

"Scott, aren't there other browsers "that have much of this same functionality,

"including the ability to quickly access other apps "and have a side panel, "and it's built right into those browsers?" And the answer is, yes, you're correct. In fact, a browser like Vivaldi would be a good example of a tool that does include many of these features.

However, if you're already happy with Google Chrome, you already have all of your extensions set up, and you have your bookmarks listed in the way that you like.

In addition, you're using Chrome across multiple devices, including your phone and tablet, and perhaps others, do you really want to switch to a brand new browser across multiple devices and have to relearn its functionality when you can add a few new superpowers by installing a free extension? Of course, the answer is going to be different for everyone, and you'll have to answer that for yourself.

But if you're already happy with Chrome, if you already have it set up across your devices,

adding this free extension is going to cause the least disruption to your workflow

and to your productivity. So if you'd like quicker access to all of your tabs, websites, and favorite productivity tools, install the Manganum extension for free at manganum.app, or click the link in the description down below. And if you have any questions about this app or other extensions, be sure to let me know down in the comments.

Thank you so much for watching this video, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.